The One That Got Away
by alwayswritewithcoffee
Summary: When a bridesmaid is killed hours before a wedding, Ryan and Esposito are called to solve the case. Serving as their shadow, Rick Castle runs headlong into his past; ex-girlfriend and current bride, Kate Beckett. An AU re-telling of 2x12 'A Rose For Everafter'. [An eight-part prompt from the Castle fanfics prompt blog on Tumblr.]
1. Chapter 1

From the Castle Fics prompt blog on Tumblr: _"2x12 AU. Castle is shadowing Esposito and Ryan and instead of Kyra, Kate is the bride and "the one that got away"."_ Eight part story, set in 2011.

* * *

His cheeks are stained with exertion, a rosy pink that he earned with a quick jog up the half block to the hotel and, then, from his hurried efforts to cross the lobby and hustle upstairs to the crime scene.

In months of shadowing Ryan and Esposito, he's never been late to a scene, never dawdled at home when the call comes to inform him that the two homicide detectives are once again on the move with an active case.

But book research had dealt him an unexpected blow, and Rick can still feel the sticky remains of the duct tape his daughter had so gleefully slapped over his mouth at his own insistence before sauntering out with her grandmother. His idea for how to free his erstwhile hero from an apartment invasion had gone awry and left him struggling against his restraints while the Hawaii Five-O theme song had blared on repeat from his coffee table.

Wiping discreetly at his face to check for any residue, Rick turns the corner of the winding hotel hallway, spotting the usual uniforms on duty and the bright yellow crime scene tape. A crowd of onlookers is something he's gotten used to in his nearly two years of a life filled with homicides, but it's not often that the lingering spectators are dressed to the nines. On his short walk he spots three identical mauve dresses dotting the group, the handful of men he can see all wearing the same standard black suit and white shirt. There is also an older woman at the very front, an over styled helmet of gray hair that nearly matches the metallic silver of a dress that is dripping with sequins, lace and the odd shine of what he knows to be taffeta after a childhood spent backstage in theatres across New England and, for a couple summers, the Midwest.

All in all, he assumes there must be a wedding scheduled in the hotel, and with what looks like most of the bridal party staying on this floor he can imagine what type of gloom might settle over the day. Giving one of the bridesmaids a polite smile, he turns and ducks under the police tape, pleased to avoid having to talk to the woman or anyone else hanging in the hallway and looking for news.

"About time you showed up, Castle," Esposito calls out to him as soon as Rick has cleared the door. The detective gives him no more than a glance, most of his attention turned towards whatever he's scribbling into his notebook that has likely been provided by the medical examiner on scene.

It isn't until he spots someone rising to their feet from the thick carpet of the room that he recognizes Lanie Parish. She looks different, her hair pulled back into some complicated configuration of curls, and her face painted with makeup that's far more dramatic than he's come to expect from the doctor.

The dress is what brings it all together, the color and fabric an exact match to the trio that he spotted in the hall. She's covered the top half of it with a leather jacket that swallows her petite frame, one that Rick would bet his next advance that Lanie pulled off the back of the cop standing beside her.

"I'll put in a call and ask Perlmutter to pick this one up," Lanie is saying as he comes to a halt beside the victim; a young woman with spiky auburn hair and a circular bruise around her neck. The technicians are careful as they lift her, gently placing limbs into the opened black bag that are standard issue for the department to transport a body.

She looks young, he thinks, his eyes lingering on her face until the zipper has hidden her from view.

"All things considered, I think it's best I don't get involved in the autopsy…." Lanie's speaking softly to Esposito when Rick turns his attention back to the two of them, her lips pressed together and her eyes flashing something that he can't quite define. Esposito seems to know exactly what has put the expression on her face though, if his nod is any indication.

"You knew the victim?" He asks softly, too much respect for Lanie and what he's sure has been a difficult day to allow him to be crass or dismissive.

"Not really," she says with a sigh, snapping off a pair of blue gloves that immediately are handed off to a waiting lab tech, who drops them into an evidence bag that Rick knows will be labeled and processed in the lab. "I've met her all of three times, including the rehearsal dinner last night, but still…."

"Who is she?" Rick poses his second question to Esposito, the creak and snap of the gurney accompanying his question as the techs prepare to wheel the body out of the room.

"Her name is Sophie Ronson," Espo replies, "Lives in Los Angeles. She arrived in New York two days ago, specifically to attend a wedding here in the hotel."

"I've determined her time of death was somewhere between two and four this morning," Lanie adds, "No one even knew anything had happened until she missed her hair appointment. She didn't answer her cell or her room phone when we called, so Laurie, another bridesmaid, came up to check and found her….."

Lanie's explanation ends with a little shrug, the doctor at a loss for words and Rick steps forward to squeeze her arm rather quickly, pleased when she manages a small smile.

"We're gonna take it from here, Lanie," Espo tells her, carefully leading her towards the hallway and under the crime scene tape that's blocking the door. "You should go back."

"Yeah," she nods in agreement, her gaze towards the group that looks to have thinned out since Rick entered the hotel room. Most of those still lingering have their attention on the pair of uniforms that are conducting interviews, collecting statements and any clues that might lead the detectives to Sophie's killer. "I'm gonna go call Perlmutter, then check on the bride…."

While Lanie heads to the left, back towards the elevators and a large block of unobstructed rooms, Rick takes a right with Esposito, wading through the remaining group towards a large set of double doors at the very end of the hall. Even from here, he can see that's where most of the original crowd has gone, the doors propped open as if to welcome them in.

"Any leads?" he asks Espo once they've gotten past the crowd, his writer's mind is already at work, crafting a story about a love triangle and murder committed in a jealous rage.

"Not yet," Espo says with a sigh, "I took the crime scene and Ryan took interviews with the bride and the groom. They're the first suspects, since it's their wedding. The groom is Will Sorenson, an FBI Agent stationed in Boston that grew up on Long Island, and the bride just graduated out of Quantico last year, she used to be on the job in the NYPD actually…."

The hotel suite is large and teeming with people, several of them sipping on champagne or munching on hors d'oeuvres from small china plates. He doesn't hear the rest of Javier's briefing, truth be told, Rick doesn't need it because the bride can't be missed as she stands in the center of the room. Her dress is form fitting, a slim column of satin that's accented by a crystal encrusted belt that sparkles in the afternoon light, dark brunette hair brushing her shoulders in soft curls that he knows are going to accent her cheekbones and leave her eyes glowing with glints of forest green and burnished gold.

"Kate," he whispers, whatever breath that remains in his lungs expelled in that one syllable. It's hard to draw breath for a moment, his heart clenching as it hasn't done since she slipped out of his front door with a packed suitcase, tears still shining on her cheeks, spiky chestnut hair standing on end from the number of times she'd drug her fingers through it while explaining to him that she couldn't stay any longer.

She had been weeks away from turning 25, a couple months from a detective's badge. Seven years ago. Seven years, two months, and three days.

Not that he kept count.

"You know Beckett?" Esposito's voice cuts into his thoughts, the surprise evident on his face from the way his eyebrows have lifted towards the buzz cut that still makes him look like he's ready to deploy with the army.

"She's the one that got away," he says without thinking, realizing what he's spoken aloud only when Espo gives a low whistle and turns on his heel to put some distance between himself, Castle, and the woman that's now looking at him with some irrepressible combination of shock, joy, surprise and, in the deepest parts of those green irises, longing.

"Rick Castle," she whispers, the sound of his name accompanied by one of those full and brilliant smiles that once could have hung the moon. He doesn't think about how his heart has started to beat in overdrive, how his fingers are itching to reach out and tuck one of those curls behind her ear to feel the familiar curve of her cheekbone and re-experience how perfectly it fits against his palm.

"Hey, Kate," he answers, shoving his hands into his coat pockets as she approaches him, a sheepish grin tugging at his lips, "Long time, no see."

* * *

He still looks good.

Her first thought might be a little superficial, but Kate can't help it. Richard Castle had always been attractive, even in the early days when he was no more than a face peering out at her from the back of a book jacket. Age seemed to be something that only did him more favors.

Why he's here she can't imagine, but she's drawn to him like a moth to a flame. In times of crisis, Castle had been her comfort, if not in person, then in the words he crafted. Even when she'd made the decision to leave, to figure out herself and make herself a better person, Kate had never managed to sever her ties with his books.

If she couldn't be with the man, she damn sure would take the piece of him she was allowed, even if she had to share it with millions of his other fans.

"No kidding," she replies quickly, feeling her lips stretch with the first smile that she's managed since this morning. Sophie's murder had upended everything, cast a shadow on what was meant to be the happiest day of her life; a day that already had been rooted in its own struggles, given who in her family was missing.

A second murder in such close proximity certainly hadn't done anything to quiet those demons.

"I haven't seen you in…." Kate wrinkles up her nose, forcing back the memories of her mother's death, of Sophie's crumpled body on the floor of her hotel room, and putting all her attention towards teasing Rick.

"Seven years," he supplies, his eyes sparking with dark blue flecks, enough of a change to tell her he's been keeping count and, maybe, that he's frustrated she hasn't.

But she has. Kate knows exactly how long it's been; seven years, two months, and three days.

"Has it been that long?" she hums in her pretense, giving a shake of her head, "Wow. You look good."

"You look better," he says, that slow grin sliding over his face with enough joy that Kate can feel the response of her own answering smile. "I mean….this dress? You look amazing, Kate."

The heat of a blush begins at the apples of her cheeks and spreads from there, and she's never been so thankful to have resisted the suggestions of practically every one of her bridesmaids, her future mother-in-law, and her aunt Theresa in wearing her hair up. Having it down allows her to dip her head, hiding behind the long strands with a shy grin.

But Castle knows her tells. She can hear his soft chuckle, and there is a moment where his hands lift, intent on reaching out to touch her, the curl of them holding the sort of familiarity and intimacy that has her heart skipping a beat, some long buried part of her craving the electricity that always sizzled across her skin whenever he touched her.

"And who is this?"

Like being doused in ice water, Will's voice shatters the moment, sending her crashing back to reality instead of settling in daydreams of the past. This isn't seven years ago, she isn't a twenty-something who doesn't quite know what she wants from life or who she wants to be, she's thirty-one, a Federal Agent, and wearing the ring of another man.

If not for a murder, she'd be married to him in a couple of hours.

"Will!" Kate plasters on a smile, turning towards the voice at her left shoulder. Like her Will is dressed for their would-be wedding, though he's slightly loosened his tie and his hair bares the marks of having seen more than one round with his fingers, she's sure from aggravation with his mother and the frustration of the day as a whole. "This is Richard Castle…." she says by way of introduction, watching as the polite curiosity on her fiancé's face changes to something a bit aggressive.

It's subtle, nothing more than the way his eyes take on a darker hue and his lips press together, but she's known Will for long enough to understand his tells. And, likewise, Will has known her long enough, been in her life long enough, that he's aware of her history with Rick.

"Oh," he says, stepping forward to capture her left hand, tangling their fingers together and turning them so that her engagement ring is on clear display, "The writer." Even though he lists Castle's occupation, the undertone of acknowledgement of their personal relationship is unmistakable, and Kate has to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. He might as well have said 'your ex-boyfriend' and been done with it.

"Indeed," Rick replies, blue eyes flicking from the top of Will's dark hair to the tip of his polished dress shoes, assessing and cataloguing the man that replaced him.

"Why are you here, exactly?"

"Working," Castle says with a grin, gesturing towards two of Kate's former colleagues in Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito as they confer with their two identical notebooks, "I shadow Detectives Ryan and Esposito for a series of books, and consult on cases for the NYPD."

Even though Kate had known, even with the pair of books in question taking up a spot on a shelf in her apartment in Boston, she can't fight the swell of pride that surges up for Castle as Rick explains his role to Will. And it's absurd, really, that with all the homicide detectives in the city, or even in the Twelfth Precinct, that she would end up with the pair who regularly got an assist from the one person she never truly seemed to shake off from her past.

The odds were surely astronomical and if she had been the sort of girl to take stock in signs, Kate would have been considering what exactly Rick's re-appearance in her life could mean.

But destiny, fate, and all those supernatural concepts had always been his domain. She was the logical one, the person driven by the evidence and the facts.

"I see," Will replies, his voice marginally warmer than it had been, "Well, I hate to interrupt your reunion, but Kate and I need to move downstairs and speak to our guests, explain why the wedding has been postponed."

The squeeze to her hand is gentle, a subtle signal to let her know that they really should leave immediately. Impressions and rubbing shoulders might not be anything that she or Will cared all too much about, but his mother put plenty of stock in social graces and maintaining appearances.

If they didn't go soon, Eleanor Sorenson would come after them herself, and badger them both for their impoliteness and inconsideration.

"Will's right," Kate says with a slow sigh, "We really should go. It was nice seeing you, Rick."

Goodbyes said, Will takes that as his cue to steer her away, leaving her barely enough time to glance over her shoulder to see Castle standing where they left him, eyes piercingly blue as they meet hers one last time.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Oh, wow! I definitely didn't think that over a hundred people would jump on this story as they have. So thank you so much for following along, I really appreciate it!_

* * *

Kate has no more than disappeared through the double doors of the suite before Ryan and Esposito are at his side, the pair of them wearing matching expressions of surprise.

"You and Beckett," Ryan says, his tone almost sounding like he's looking for confirmation in light of his partner sharing the news with him.

"Yeah, me and Beckett," Rick replies, still gazing at the spot where he had last seen her, absurd in his hope that if he doesn't move his eyes from that space that Kate will appear again. Even so, he's not so wholly absorbed in his vigil that he doesn't notice the pregnant pause from the two cops who are flanking him, nor does he miss the loaded look that they exchange. "What?"

"How….."

"How did we meet?" The grin forms without his permission, though he does tamp down on the light chuckle that wants to escape. His memories of Kate Beckett coming into his life are still crystal clear, if only for the profound effect it had on him "Her third month on the job; I stole a police horse and she arrested me for theft and public nudity. And when I got out of lock up, I asked her out."

"And she said yes?" Esposito asks with a laugh.

"She did," Rick confirms, "Took her out for breakfast that morning, actually."

There's a distinctive furrow between Ryan's eyebrows, the detective hastily trying to do the math and figure out their history, but Rick stops him short, "We were together for a year and a half, detective."

"I wasn't asking…." Ryan says with an embarrassed shake of his head.

"Your mouth wasn't, but the rest of your face was," he replies, watching Espo struggle to turn his laugh into a cough even as Ryan looks like he wants to ask more questions. Even Esposito, Rick is sure, wouldn't mind extracting every morsel of information he can about his past with Kate, but an approaching uniform saves Rick from an interrogation.

Officer Johnston is looking at the small reporter's notebook in his hand when he stops next to them, undoubtedly double checking that he has all his facts straight before he speaks. He passes a printed list of names that's been in his other hand to Esposito, and Rick can see the neat check marks beside each one, "We've completed interviews with everyone on your list except one," Johnston says, pointing to the unchecked named about halfway down the page; Mike Weitz. "No one seems to know where Mr. Weitz is, but he's another groomsmen in the wedding."

"Oh God," the moan of distress is quiet, but all four of the men turn as one towards the voice. Lanie's standing just behind them, her face stricken at the latest turn in the case, "The last time I saw Mike was at the end of the rehearsal dinner last night." The doctor pauses to swallow, lifting her shawl up so that it covers her bare shoulders, her dark eyes swiveling to Ryan, Esposito, Castle and Officer Johnston in turn, "And he was with Sophie."

That quiet declaration has the effect of setting the two detectives into motion, Esposito immediately tugging out his phone and Ryan turning towards the crowd.

"Hey!" Kevin's voice rings out like a bell, raised as loudly as it is about the soft chatter of the group milling around the hotel suite, "Anyone seen Mike Wietz today?"

The ensuing silence answers the question on its own, though Rick sees a few shrugs or the shake of a head. Behind him, Esposito's voice is urgent, quietly requesting an APB for Mike and that all officers be on the lookout. With the tense silence that has enveloped the room, that particular statement is easily heard, and just like that the room changes from politely concerned to completely worried.

With the new tension in the room, the group chatter also shifts, no longer is it calm conversation but now the room is full of urgent whispers and questions posed at the three of them when Espo hangs up his phone.

"The APB is just a precaution, no one should worry," Ryan tells the group, though all of them can tell it didn't do any good. Knowing that he tried, Ryan gives Castle a shrug as they follow Esposito back into the hall, Officer Johnston following in their wake after Espo's quiet request.

Within five minutes, the uniforms have been divided into groups of three and assigned floors of the hotel to search. As usual, Castle follows Ryan and Esposito, who head towards the opposite end of the hotel hallway, intent on searching the bridal party's floor first.

* * *

"Thank you so much for coming."

She's lost count of how many times those words have fallen out of her mouth in the last hour. The hall where cocktail hour would be held between the wedding ceremony and the reception is full of people, all of them sipping on champagne and hors d'oeuvres between fervent chatter and sneaky looks back towards she and Will.

As the latest pair of guests retreat and flag down the closest waiter to snag two glasses from the tray he carries, Kate allows the fake smile she's plastered on her face to drop, rubbing anxiously at the slight headache that seems to be building between her eyebrows.

"Hey, drink this," Will's voice is soft at her side, pressing a bottle of water into her unoccupied hand. The appearance of the bottle surprises her, an expression that carries over to her fiancé who is looking at her with a sheepish little smile, "I haven't seen you drink anything in hours, Kate. Your headache is probably as much dehydration as stress."

He's always taking care of her, Kate thinks as she twists off the plastic cap and lifts the bottle to her lips. The liquid sliding down her throat doesn't exactly ease the ache in her head, but it does help soothe her dry mouth and refocus herself after an endless parade of curious people that she barely knows; all of them seemingly more interested in the gory details of murder than anything about the wedding.

But, really, that was to be expected; Will had told her a month ago that he barely knew most of the people on the guest list, that most of them were people his mother knew through society circles and charity boards. A few others were old contacts and investors in his father's business, but neither she nor Will had enough friends or family to equal to the 350 guests that Eleanor Sorenson had invited to their wedding.

"Thanks," she says once she's polished off half the bottle, slipping her free hand into his to give it a squeeze, "Some day we're having, isn't it?"

"That's an understatement," Will sighs, his blue eyes going glassy and unfocused. Without asking, Kate knows he's probably thinking about Sophie. "It's hard to believe she's dead, you know?"

She does know because the same thought had been circling in her head all day. Even though she'd hurried down the hall to Sophie's room when Laurie's yell had sounded, even though she and Lanie had met one another's gaze in horror when they'd seen those blank blue eyes and the bruising on her neck; none of it seemed real. It seemed like a terrible dream.

Castle being part of the investigating team only added to it.

"I know," she agrees, resting her head against Will's shoulder for just a moment, "But Esposito and Ryan are very good at their jobs, and they'll catch who did this….."

"And what about Castle?"

Though he says it casually, Kate can feel the way the muscles in his body tense at the mention of the writer. He doesn't like Rick, of that much she is certain, but she pushes away the idea of dwelling on why. There's enough to worry about and figure out before throwing her past with Richard Castle into the mix. "Well…." she pauses for a moment, trying to think up a honest and non incriminating way to answer the question, "He's got the mind of a cop, always has, he just uses it to write books rather than solve murders."

The grunt of acknowledgement Will gives is unconvincing, and it tugs at the layer of frustration that's settled on the day with enough force that Kate untangles herself from him, finishing off the bottle of water in three big sips before giving an underhanded toss towards the trash can and hearing the soft thunk of the plastic falling to the bottom of the container. "I didn't ask for him to be here, Will," Kate adds when she turns back towards her fiancé, "I was as surprised as you were."

Whatever emotion it is that slides across Will's face, she can't put a name to it, but there is something wary and odd about the way his eyes flash. "Surprised, that's one word for it," he murmurs, more to himself than to her.

It's on the tip of her tongue to ask him what exactly he isn't saying, but the words dissolve before she can unleash them. Instead Kate turns towards another group of guests, and once again gives the same explanation about the postponement and, yet again, hears the same platitudes and apologies for their having to wait longer to be married.

"Thank you," Will tells the quartet, the politeness painted onto his face an obvious clue to Kate that he has no idea who any of these people are. "We have champagne and hors d'oeuvres that will be served for the next hour. Consider it as a thank you for traveling all this way for nothing. Please help yourselves."

With the latest set of guests sent on their way, Kate turns back to him with a long sigh, her eyes narrowed towards Will for a long, searching look, "Are you going to tell me what bothers you about Rick, or am I going to have to guess?"

He at least has the grace to look apologetic, though it doesn't stop him from grabbing a passing flute of champagne as a waiter passes and gulping half of it in one go, "I just think…" Will starts, pressing his lips together as if he's going to back out on his confession. Kate pins him with one of her glares and he sighs, eyes downcast to stare into the bubbling surface of his drink. "I think Castle still has a thing for you," he says, eyes rising to meet hers, "I saw his face when he came in the suite, when he was talking to you and he just….."

"He what?" she prompts, careful to keep anything aggressive out of her voice, even if her heart is beating double time.

"He looks at you like I do," Will says, bringing the glass back to his mouth. "Like a man who is desperately in love."

There is a swooping sensation in her abdomen at those words, something indefinable blooming and stretching outward until her skin starts to tingle, but just as quickly, there is a flood of guilt that extinguishes the fire. She shouldn't care what Rick Castle does or doesn't do in regards to her, it's not Castle that she loves, it's Will.

"Will, that's absurd," she tells him, her voice forceful as if she's trying to convince the both of them. "Even if Castle did look at me like that, it's just reminiscing. I haven't talked to him in seven years, he can't possibly still be in love with me."

"And besides, I love you," she adds, her hand lifting to touch his face, fingers gentle in how they cup his cheek and force his eyes to hers. Whatever the rest of it all means, whatever lingering attachment she has to Castle, Kate knows that she's telling him the truth. She does love him.

"Kate…."

"There you are!"

Whatever Will had been planning to say is over ran by his mother's voice, her brunette hair done up in an elegant french twist and a diamond necklace sparkling at her throat with earrings to match. Eleanor's dress is a bright turquoise, exactly the sort of color that ensures she won't be missed in the crowd and just happens to clash fantastically with the rest of the wedding decor.

The colors for the wedding had been one of the few things Kate had been adamant about, refusing to budge at the suggestions of her future mother-in-law and the wedding planner she had hired.

She wouldn't be surprised if Eleanor had picked her dress with specific purpose, her determination to always be noticed working in tandem with the desire to thumb her nose at Kate's unwillingness to concede on a color scheme.

"I've just been talking to the concierge and the event director at the hotel," Eleanor tells them as she approaches, stepping up to kiss Will on the cheek but making no move to greet Kate at all, "It took a bit of greasing palms from your Uncle Teddy, but they've agreed to let us use the hall in three weeks. So, in ten minutes, I need the two of you to go over by the string quartet and make the announcement for the new date. February 12; the ceremony will be at 6 p.m."

Maybe it's their chosen professions and the knowledge of how long it can take to close a case, or just their agreement that Will's mother is exhausting, but Kate meets his eyes for a brief glance, relieved to see that he's just as unwilling to follow the instructions as she is. "Mother….." he begins softly, sighing at the way Eleanor's eyes immediately spark with annoyance.

"William, Teddy and I went to a lot of trouble to make this happen," Eleanor rebukes him quickly as Teddy saddles up on her right with a bright smile.

"And we are both very grateful for that," Kate says quickly, "But we both think that it'd be best to wait until everything has been settled with Sophie's murder, give everyone a chance to get some distance from it all."

"I would think three weeks is plenty of time," his mother says, and though her voice is sticky sweet, the dark undertone of anger and impatience is easily heard, "It isn't as if you were particularly close to her, Katherine. She was Will's friend, and he certainly understands that it's important we give a good impression. We wouldn't want people thinking that the two of you are going to call this thing off." Eleanor tops off her words with a smile, as if daring Kate to challenge her in front of Will.

She doesn't, even if she knows Eleanor would love nothing more than for she and Will to call off their engagement.

"We would rather wait," Will interjects before his mother can continue talking, plowing right over any objection that she's opened her mouth to make, "Sophie's case might not even be closed in three weeks."

Teddy and Eleanor both scoff in turn at that, the man rolling his eyes as Eleanor shakes her head in disappointment. "Well, what can you expect from that lot," she sighs, "You really should call your friends at the FBI Will, they could have this sorted in no time, and we could all move on…."

"Detectives Ryan and Esposito are some of the best the city has to offer," Kate tells them both, aware that her voice has taken on a hard edge though she makes no move to correct it, "And there is nothing about the case to bring it into the FBI's jurisdiction, Will would be reprimanded for trying to abuse federal resources if he even suggested it. Maybe if you took an interest in what we both do for a living, you would know that by now, Eleanor."

Kate considers the high patches of color that appear on Eleanor's cheeks to be it's own sort of victory, especially as she seems to have left the woman speechless. Teddy looks equally shocked, one hand extended to lay on Eleanor's arm as Will tries to turn his chuckle into a quick cough.

She's tangled her fingers back together with Will's by the time Eleanor looks to have gotten her voice back, tugging him away from his mother and uncle with a quick grin, "Maybe Uncle Teddy can get his money back?" Will asks over his shoulder as they scamper away, Kate's eyes focused on the opposite side of the room where Will's best man Keith is standing.

* * *

"Here man, drink this."

Esposito hands over a glass of water, which Mike Weitz tips to his mouth and drains in one go before handing it back over with a request for another. Automatically, Castle turns to pick up the pitcher with one hand, accepting the glass from Espo with the other.

"Alright, Mike," Ryan says over the splash of water, "Walk us through what happened last night."

Mike sucks down a big gulp of air, wiping a shirtsleeve across a forehead still beaded with sweat, "Nothing really. I went to the rehearsal dinner, you know? Had a good time, drank a bit, told some stories on Will, the usual stuff. And at the end of the night, we were all sitting at the bar having drinks and Sophie starts coming on to me, you know? Flirting, touching me, giving me those looks that girls send when they want you to take them to bed, and I was up for that. She's an attractive girl, you know? The kind that I'd definitely go for."

He pauses in his story to accept the glass from Castle, taking one more long drink that's followed by another heaving sigh. "I asked her if she wanted to go up to my room, and she told me that she did but she wanted to buy me a drink first. That bitch spiked my drink! Not even ten minutes after I'd finished it, I started feeling funny. She told me she'd get me to my room and instead she locked me in that storage room and took my keycard!"

With another long series of gulps, Mike drains his second glass of water, meeting the eyes of each of the men in turn. "Who the hell roofies a guy? All you've got to do is ask!"

"Well, given Sophie's behavior we don't think she had any intention of sleeping with you…." Ryan says, lifting his eyes from his notebook to stare at Mike.

"So what was she trying to do?"

"That's what we are going to figure out," Esposito replies, turning towards the main door of the hotel room as it opens and Will strides through it.

"Mike, man, are you okay?" Will asks, hurrying over to sit next to him as Mike nods. "What the hell happened, Keith just told me you were missing?"

"Sophie," Mike says darkly, meeting Esposito's eyes before looking at Will, "She drugged me, locked me in a storage room."

Maybe Rick sees it because he's watching Will so closely, but there's just a flicker of something in his gaze, the slightest break of understanding that's quickly masked by concern for his friend and outrage that any of this could have happened. Suddenly, Will's every bit an FBI Agent. He's on his feet in an instant demanding answers from Ryan and Esposito about what they've found out so far.

"We've got some good leads," Espo says, his voice calm and even despite Will's yelling, "And we're going to follow up on them, but I'm going to ask you if you noticed anything odd with Sophie last night at the rehearsal dinner."

The question forces Will to stop yelling, long fingers running down his face as he closes his eyes and tries to think back to the previous night. "The only thing I remember is that I got annoyed with her because she answered a phone call during Mike's speech," he sighs, "Right after she finished the call she left the room for a few minutes. I knew that Sophie would normally never do such a thing, so I wanted to ask her what was going on. But she seemed fine when I talked to her later, and Uncle Teddy came over to drag me to the bar for tequila shots right when I planned to bring it up."

"Okay, that's great," Ryan says, flipping to a new page in his notebook, "Do you have any idea when approximately that was? I can check her phone records and….."

The rest of the conversation is lost on Castle as Mike strolls over to the mini-fridge and snags a bag of M&M's from it, ripping the bag open with his teeth and spilling a portion of the candy into his mouth. Despite himself, he had been hoping that Kate would follow Will to afford him another chance to talk to her, but as the minutes tick by there's no sign of the erstwhile bride.

Where is she? Where would she go? Rick asks himself, grinning as Mike again chomps on the chocolate candies with relish.

Once he had known another person with a weakness for chocolate, and just like that, he knows exactly where to find Kate Beckett.

* * *

The ballroom is decorated in deep purple and silver, accents of navy with the lightest dash of pink. Even if the color scheme is Kate through and through, Rick has a hard time reconciling the woman he knew with someone who would want large satin bows adoring three hundred chairs, and a gaudy crystal lamp surrounded by wreaths of roses and tulips topping every table.

He knows for a fact that Kate hates tulips, that she prefers lilies and orchids. He had always considered her taste in flowers to be a little eccentric; she'd blushed furiously and spent the whole night kissing him the first time he'd given her roses, a traditional flower if there ever was one, but left to her own devices she had always gone for the unexpected and, in time, he had learned to do the same in picking flowers for her.

"So who designed this?" he asks, smiling when the shadow that he can see hovering behind the enormous eight-tiered wedding cake flinches. It's a beat later before those familiar eyes and that beautiful face leaning past the cake to stare at him, a surprised grin playing at her mouth. "I know it wasn't you."

"My eventual mother-in-law," Kate tells him, running one slender finger around the largest tier until it's covered in chocolate icing. She wastes no time in lifting it to her mouth and sucking the stuff off, somehow managing to be both adorable and devastatingly sexy with that one small action. "She puts a lot of stock into appearances. The more extravagant, the better," she continues with a frown, sizing him up as Rick strolls across the floor, "How did you find me?"

"I thought about where you'd expect no one to look for you," he explains, gesturing to the room at large. "And where there would be chocolate."

She blushes at that, those long curls falling forward to hide her face for just a moment. "Mmm, no one would be looking for me at my wedding, that's for sure," Kate replies, picking up the elaborate silver knife and twirling it in her hand, "And it's a shame to let this thing go to waste, so…." With a sly grin, she sinks the knife into the bottom tier, carving out a decent sized piece of cake that she neatly transfers to a small china plate and passes to him. "Forks are on the tables."

While she busies herself with cutting a second piece, Rick moves to the nearest table, sinking into a chair that affords him a fantastic view of Kate's backside. In that dress her ass is on perfect display; toned, curved and wonderful to look at.

He knows she's caught him at it when she abruptly turns, her own plate topped with chocolate cake and two strawberries picked from the table garnish. She doesn't chastise him for staring, but that soft rosy blush is back on her cheeks, and her mouth is screwed up in one of those smiles that she used to give him when she couldn't quite keep a straight face.

He's thrilled to see it, and just as happy to have Kate sliding into a chair beside him, pinning him with those dark green eyes. "I should be married by now," she tells him, her eyes slowly roving over the room, taking in the expansive decor and all the empty chairs.

"Yes, you should," he agrees, aware by the way her nostrils flare that she didn't miss the dual meaning of his words. "And that's quite an accomplishment," Rick hurries to add, his tone light hearted even though there's a small ache somewhere deep in his chest that he isn't the guy who put a diamond ring on her finger, "Given that you spent so much time telling me that marriage was a jurassic institution."

Her laugh is bright and clear when it comes, her head tipping up towards the ceiling so that her thick brunette hair cascades down her back in those soft curls, "At the time I truly thought that was the case," Kate admits with a grin, her eyes sparkling with delight at the memory of her headstrong 24-year-old ideals.

"Well, I'm glad you found someone that made you change your mind," Rick tells her slowly, though the smile he gives her is forced. Even if he is happy for her there would always be that part of him that wondered why he couldn't have been the one to spend his life making her happy. Why did Will Sorenson get to be the guy? Why couldn't it have been him?

Kate's tugged her bottom lip between her teeth at his words, some of the joy leaking out of her eyes as she observes him. For a moment she looks torn on whatever it is she planned to say, hesitating even though her mouth has already opened to give her thoughts a voice. "I….." she begins, eyes staring down at her untouched cake until they lift up to meet his own, "I wouldn't assume that Will's the one who made me change my mind," Kate confesses, her voice barely above a whisper.

The admission knocks all the air out of him, leaving Rick unable to do anything but stare at Kate in complete surprise. She'd certainly never shared that with him when they were together, always insisting that marriage wasn't anything that she needed in life, that she was quite happy just being his girlfriend.

Not that it had stopped him from buying an engagement ring and hiding it in the depths of his closet. He had always wondered if Kate found it, if that had played a role in her decision to leave.

"Some girls would look at today and think that it's a sign..." she adds just as softly, those eyes cutting across to meet his.

"Some girls, sure," he concedes, giving her a soft smile, "But not Katherine Beckett. She doesn't believe in signs, or fate, or destiny..." Rick's teasing her when he says it, countless memories of arguments about the existence of everything from time travel to Bigfoot. Kate didn't believe in much of anything while he, generally, believed in the possibility of anything. And what he would discount? Rick had pretended to believe in it, just for the pleasure of seeing Kate get riled up.

"But I believe in you, which is far more important," Kate tells him, something so precious and so breathtaking swimming in those green eyes that he can't help but lean forward, his heart hammering against his ribs. It's the second time she's confessed something to him that he'd once have given nearly anything to hear her say, whispered words that are a balm to a heart that's still smarting from letting her slip out of his front door and out of his life without truly giving in to a proper fight to keep her.

"Kate…." Rick breaths out her name on a sigh, his voice catching on the sharp T at the back of her name. She's so close to him now, close enough that she must have leaned forward on her own accord because he can't have possibly covered that distance all alone. And she's looking at him with expectation, a yearning in her eyes that means he just has to kiss...

"Hey, Castle," Espo's voice echoes in the large room, by the time Rick has jumped away from Kate and turned to look at him, it's clear from the cringing expression that Esposito is making that he knows he's interrupted something important. "We're leaving now, if you need a ride. I didn't want to leave you stranded."

His instinct is to say no, to tell him that he'll catch a cab and meet up with him later, but Kate's getting to her feet, something brittle about the way she's moving and what he could swear is the glimmer of tears in her eyes. "I need to get back upstairs, Will is probably looking for me," she tells both he and Esposito, quickly striding towards a side door and slipping out before Rick can so much as form a word of protest.

Still, he meets Esposito's eyes with a helpless shrug, and his friend gives that same low whistle as he heard that morning when he first saw Kate. "Bro, you've got it bad, don't you?" he asks, stepping forward to slap Rick on the back and escort him towards the exit.


	3. Chapter 3

"Why do you even have this book?"

"What do you mean ' _why_ '? I bought it for research!"

"Research," Esposito's voice is dripping with disbelief, a hand darting across his own desk to snatch _A Calm Before Storm_ from Kevin Ryan's hand. It's a nice book, one of the hardcover editions with a dust jacket that's in pristine condition and has Castle's face grinning at him from the inside cover when he flips it open, "Or maybe you just like it."

"So what if I do?" Ryan asks, a note of challenge to his voice as he gets to his feet, walking around the two desks that he and Esposito shoved together years ago when they started working together as partners; paired up at the suggestion of Kate Beckett, the very person to whom the book Espo is holding is dedicated.

Though neither of them knew that before yesterday.

"Look," he continues, ignoring the grin that Espo gives him as he also stands up, holding the book just out of easy reach with one of those smirks that sometimes leaves Kevin wanting to smack him upside the head. "When Castle started shadowing us, I figured it couldn't hurt to read his work, get an idea of what his next novel might look like. And you should be glad that I did," Ryan informs his partner, waiting until Esposito's gaze has swiveled back towards the book in question before he nudges the rolling chair the detective is standing beside, ensuring that the piece of furniture rolls directly over Espo's foot.

Esposito drops the book with a soft howl, and Kevin grins as he catches it, sitting himself happily at the edge of his partner's desk while Espo scowls at him and moves the chair out of the way.

"Why am I supposed to be glad that your fanboy ass kept all of Castle's books?" he asks, clearly annoyed by more than just Ryan's interest in the books.

Stifling the urge to grin, Kevin flips open the book, moving quickly past the title page and the copyright information to the subsequent page where two lines are printed in neat letters:

 _To KB;_

 _Always._

"A rather innocuous, if sweet, dedication," Ryan says once Espo has scanned the lines, "But now we know who the illustrious KB is."

"Beckett," Esposito replies, glancing up at the murder board where her DMV photo is pinned beside Will Sorenson's to identify each of them as persons of interest in Sophie Ronson's murder. "Castle dedicated a book to Beckett….."

"He did," Kevin says with a quick nod, frowning when Espo reaches over to take the book again, flipping through pages at random almost as if he's searching for something specific.

"What is this book about, anyway?"

"Russian diplomat is beheaded by an ex-KGB agent known as The Fear. Storm's CIA handler, Clara Strike, hands him the case, and he tries to stop the guy before he murders some other diplomats and starts World War III," Ryan rattles off, "The more pertinent plot for us is that Storm follows a lead to the Ukraine, and while in Kiev he meets a graduate student named Kadie Bennett. He and Kadie immediately begin a fling of sorts that lasts the duration of the book, and Kadie uses her knowledge of Eastern European history and culture to help Storm navigate his way through some of the higher echelons of society in order to locate The Fear."

"Kadie Bennett," Esposito says with a roll of his eyes, "Hop, skip and a jump to Kate Beckett, isn't it?"

Ryan's acknowledgement of the question, as well as his answer, is just to nod. "She even, uh...well, the description in the book, she could pass for Beckett. It's spot on, except for the hair. Kadie is described with short, choppy hair."

"Beckett's hair was short when I met her," Espo replies, flipping to another page, "I suppose they have one of those relationships that's full of cliche saving the damsel in distress stuff?"

"The opposite, actually. Kadie's written as a girl who can handle herself, and she even gets Storm out of a tight spot when he first meets her and then again when they get trapped in a room while on the run from some Russians. She's the one that comes up with the escape plan," Kevin explains, grinning at the frown Esposito has on his face as he continues to flip through the book. "She doesn't take any crap from Storm, either. Whenever he tries to protect her, push her aside, or tell her what to do, she's quick to put him in his place. And then there's page 105….."

Lifting an eyebrow in his direction, Espo quickly turns to the page Ryan mentioned, eyes skimming what has to be one the more detailed and, well, intriguing sex scenes that he's ever laid eyes on. "Wow…." he mutters, shaking his head like a dog that's just been dunked in water, the last line of the page - one that features Storm lifting Kadie up and contorting their bodies for what looks to be an energetic round two - now seared into his memory, "Makes you wonder if the real thing was comparable to this, or if Castle just has an overactive imagination."

"Or maybe the real thing was better."

Both Kevin and Esposito flinch at the voice that sounds at their backs, turning in tandem to see Kate Beckett regarding them both with scrutiny, "Nice to see that the NYPD is keeping you busy, boys," she says, barely containing a grin as they both jump back to their feet, Espo dropping _A Calm Before Storm_ with the desperation of a man trying to get away from a rapidly approaching fire.

"Hey, Beckett," Ryan drawls, giving her his best grin, though its strained at the edges with embarrassment, "What are you...uh…" he pauses, clearing his throat to get rid of the high pitch of surprise that he's speaking to her with, "What are you doing here?"

"Helping."

That's all she says, any additional words cut off as Roy Montgomery opens the door to his office with a big smile directed her way, "Did the Feds kick you out already?" he asks as he approaches Kate, reaching in to give his former star homicide detective a hug that she returns with her own wide smile.

"Not yet," Kate says with a laugh, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear once they've separated, "But it wouldn't hurt to ask me again in a couple of months."

Montgomery's chuckle is light hearted though his eyes have strayed to the murder board where Beckett and Will's photos are on clear display, "If you've come for an update on the case, there's not much new," he begins, "Hotel security gave us a photo of the guy that phoned Sophie from the lobby during the rehearsal dinner, and uniforms are out looking for him now. Hopefully he'll be able to tell us what she needed the drugs for."

"The drugs?" Kate asks, looking at Ryan and Esposito, "That's the guy who sold Sophie the roofies?"

"Yeah," Ryan picks up the story from Montgomery, gesturing to the grainy security still, "That guy is Boyd Gamble. He's a low level dealer that I must have busted half a dozen times when I was working in narcotics. According to Sophie's phone records, he's the last person that called her before she died. Given his history, I'm sure once we get him in the box he'll confirm the theory we have of him selling Sophie the drugs that she used on Mike. And, with any luck, he'll be able to tell us what she wanted to do with them or pointing us towards someone who knows."

The nod that Kate gives to them is solemn, but there's a flicker of pride in her eyes, something that Ryan appreciates given that Beckett had been the one to initially train he and Esposito in homicide. Like any other job change, working murders had come with its own tricks and challenges, and though he'd only worked with her for eight months before she had left for Quantico, Beckett had been as invaluable to his success as a homicide detective as the two men standing next to him.

"It's good work, Beckett," Montgomery assures her, waiting until she has met his eyes and taken stock of how confident her former Captain is, "We'll get this guy."

"I know you will," she agrees, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocking back just a bit on her heels, "But if you have no objection, I'd like to help put this one to bed."

From the wary look that slips onto Montgomery's face, Ryan expects his Captain to say no, and apparently so does Beckett because she's quick to step forward, blocking Montgomery's view of anyone but her, "I'm not going to tell you it isn't personal; it is. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be here. But this isn't for me. I knew Sophie, and I liked her, but she was Will's friend. He's the one that wanted her in the bridal party, and he's the one that's been cut up by her murder. I want to do this for him, Roy."

"The FBI won't like it, Kate," he sighs, scratching absently at his cheek while he sizes her up.

"Then we won't tell them. Anything I do is strictly off the books, the collar is all yours. I just want to help," she replies, her voice steady despite the soft plea that colors it, "Let me help get this guy; Will shouldn't have to go through what I have…..he should get to know that the guy who killed someone he cared about is rotting in jail."

All three of them know her history; just as they are intimately aware that her mother's murder case still sits unsolved in the file room down in the basement of the precinct. It's that knowledge, combined with Kate's plea, which seems to convince Roy, who gives a small nod of assent, "But you're on a short leash, Beckett. Don't do anything stupid that I have to report to your bosses in Washington."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir," Kate replies, grinning when Roy shoots her with a skeptical look.

"Welcome back," he tells her, the shake of his head more in exasperation than annoyance as the phone begins to ring in his office. "And you owe me dinner before you leave town," Montgomery adds on his way back into the room, the words shot over his shoulder before the door closes on Kate's laugh of agreement.

* * *

As is custom the ding of the elevator announces his arrival to the Homicide Division, the double doors sliding open to admit Rick to a bullpen that's already in full swing at 9 a.m.. A creature of habit, his travel mug of coffee is clutched in one hand, a bag of pastries from the bakery just down the block in the other.

It's the scent of baked goods that has most of the cops who are hard at work lifting their heads from paperwork or swiveling towards the smell as they field phone calls. LT is the first to abandons his task altogether; following Rick past the row of desks, hot on his heels as he turns into the break room and deposits the bag on a nearby table.

The rule is simple: first come, first serve for whatever he supplies the division with and, with that in mind, the horde descends within minutes, snatching and grabbing at whatever they can reach while he busies himself with concocting the perfect cappuccino from the machine he had installed less than two months into his shadowing of Ryan and Esposito.

The NYPD mug he prefers now full of his work, Rick takes a large inhale of the aroma his second cup of the day gives off. A grin tugs at his mouth as he brings the cup to his lips, taking one long, leisurely sip while scanning the bullpen to take the measure of the day.

He certainly doesn't expect to see Kate, her slender frame dressed in tight jeans and a dark green sweater that accentuates the olive tones of her skin and the caramel strands of her hair. But she's right there, sitting at the edge of Esposito's desk, her attention absorbed in the murder board that must contain all the details of Sophie Ronson's murder.

In his shock the coffee goes down the wrong pipe, leaving Rick sputtering and coughing as the hot liquid burns a path down his throat. He tries not to make much noise, determined to only show himself once he's stopped gagging and his eyes aren't watering so heavily that tears are rolling down his face, but that's before he stumbles against the counter and half the coffee in his mug sloshes over the rim, scalding the back of his hand and drenching the sleeve of his coat.

With a strangled swear, he drops the cup into the sink, flicking on the faucet to run his hand underneath with the rapid tap of heels across a wooden floor serving as the soundtrack. Before he's even managed to stop grimacing at the flash of pain, Kate's filling the doorway, her eyes full of concern.

"Castle, are you okay?"

He was right about her eyes when paired with that sweater. They seem infinite today, staring back at him from underneath curled lashes and expertly applied black eyeliner that has the tawny brown flecks somehow standing out far more than he remembers.

"I'm….I'm fine," Rick manages to mutter, aware that for the second time in as many days, Kate Beckett has arrived and knocked the breath out of him just by being in the same room. "Spilled coffee on my hand is all."

"Oh," she says it softly, a gentle smile on her face that he appreciates even if she is trying not to grin at his clumsiness. Without another word, she's reaching towards the drawer closest to the break room door, one that he can't recall anyone ever opening in his time at the Twelfth, revealing a collection of items that normally should be in a First Aid kit. All of the stuff has been carelessly chucked in the drawer to send whoever is in need of them on an expedition. "I actually started stocking this drawer when I was here," Kate tells him with that same smile, "I'm surprised they kept it up after I left."

But she's quickly withdrawn a large bandaid and closing the drawer, sliding right beside him to tug open the refrigerator and dig around until she's come up with a small green bottle. "Aloe vera," is her only explanation, even if he can read the logo printed on the front, the fridge door closing shut with a soft slam.

It flutters across his mind that he should tell her he can manage this part himself, that it's best for the both of them if he doesn't let her touch him. While the words are buzzing around in his brain, none of them manage to escape his mouth before Kate's taken the three steps she needs to get close to him. Being in direct proximity seems to be all it takes for his heart, the organ so unreliable these days when it comes to maintaining a steady beat, to start a furious gallop in his chest. The anticipation rises like a swelling tide because, standing with his backside pressed against the counter, he can see her hand reaching out, feel her fingers closing around his wrist just below where the angry red patch of skin is located.

Just as he expected the electricity that always existed between them is still there. The caress of her fingers against his flashes like lightning, igniting across his skin and Rick swears that the air in the room begins to crackle with it. Being this close to Kate he can see how her eyes grow a bit darker, those brown specks turning golden when she meets his eyes and leaving him sure that he's not the only one who felt the charge.

But Kate doesn't hold the gaze for long, dropping her focus towards his hand with a soft hum. Normally he would ask her something, try and think of some way to diffuse the tension that's risen so quickly between them, but he's absolutely out of practice with her and, even if he weren't, Rick sincerely doubts he would be able think of much of anything as she spreads a small bit of aloe on his skin and, with a slowness that is its own form of torture, begins massaging the stuff over the burn in tight little circles.

It's a mistake to look at her while she works, to see how the full pillow of her bottom lip is caught between her teeth and notice how there is a wrinkle marring the skin between her eyebrows; a mark of concentration that he's always found adorable on her. She's beautiful, the effortless kind that so many women would spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to achieve, though Kate's allure has always been that she never particularly cared about any of that.

He swallows back a groan at the light pressure she uses, refusing to allow his mind to wander to the nights where she'd employed a similar grip on other parts of his body. It isn't any easier when she lifts her head, meeting his eyes with a quick look, one that ignites something within him and seems to detach his head from the rest of his body. Rick doesn't think as he steps forward, his body hovering so close to Kate's that he can feel how she's radiating body heat. For a moment, they both just stare, eyes locked and that indefinable heat swirling between them.

The ringing of a phone at a desk right outside the room breaks the spell, Kate jerking to attention with little more than a tug of the hand she's still holding between hers and the slight widening of her eyes. "I...uh….here…." she mutters, passing Rick the bandage with a pink flush to her cheeks and hurrying back out into the bullpen as soon as he's taken it from her.

He hangs behind long enough to cover the burn with the bandage, throwing away the wrappings and storing the bottle back in the fridge. Kate's settled herself back on Esposito's desk, her attention back on the murder board, but the two detectives meet his eyes in turn letting him know without words that they both saw the exchange in the break room.

Rick isn't sure exactly why his abdominal muscles tighten with worry, but the silence hangs thick between the four of them as he pulls up a chair, unable to stop himself from noticing how Kate won't look at him despite his sitting a few feet away.

"No forensic evidence left at the crime scene," Kate says once the silence has stretched on for another thirty seconds. She can't stand the tension, and from a practical point of view she does need to talk through the case thus far with the investigating team. It's a little odd being back in the bullpen, sitting on the end of what used to be her desk at the 12th Precinct; the one that Esposito inherited when she left. The boys are both to her left, each of them sitting in the rolling chairs that belong to their work stations, the very same positions that they took in the early days of their partnership and during the months they worked with her.

With her words she notices that they both look towards the murder board, their attention diverting from Castle to instead focus on the still incomplete timeline that they've constructed of Sophie's interactions in the day leading up to her death.

"The only thing we have from the crime scene right now is that her earring is missing," Espo tells her, gesturing towards the close up photo of Sophie's right ear. The lobe is stained with blood, an open cut from where the earring was ripped out of her ear.

"And that's odd," she sighs, glaring at the photo as if it's done her a personal wrong, "There's nothing to suggest that Sophie was killed somewhere else in the hotel and then stashed in her room. "

"If she were killed in her room, you would think that the earring would be there," Castle adds, "It's not a stretch to think that her murderer is the one who pulled it out of her ear, so where is it?"

"Maybe the killer took it as a trophy?" Ryan suggests, "Or straightened up after himself."

"Maybe," she concedes, though in her gut Kate knows it feels wrong. Trophies were usually taken by serial killers, or people with a deep-seeded connection to the victim or to the act of murder itself. The way Sophie had died, choked from behind as she had been, it felt like a murder committed in anger; someone losing their control and ending her life. An act of passion, spur of the moment, and not at all the sort that she would expect would lead the killer to take a memento.

But why?

"The last person to see her that we know of was Mike," Espo begins, pointing at the notation on the board where Mike and Sophie left the bar, "Security footage has the timing he gave us right, we have video of the two of them crossing the lobby from the hotel bar, and riding up the elevator to the rooms. No cameras in the hallways, so once they get off the elevator it's anyone's guess…."

"So, Sophie and Mike leave the bar just before 1:30 in the morning, he's already been drugged and he admitted to feeling those effects before he ever closed out the tab for the night," Kate says, getting to her feet, unable to resist the urge to begin pacing. She can feel the thread of something poking at her brain, all the information on the board right there and just waiting to be pieced together if she can just make the connection.

"Sophie's got her hands full," Castle jumps in, meeting her eyes and she's not surprised to notice that they're sparkling at her, the same sort of glint over working through a murder as he had when working on the plot for one of his books, "Mike's a tall guy, he's drugged, slurring his words, probably having trouble standing on his own. She manages to get him in the elevator, props him against the wall to pick the floor she needs."

"But it's the eighth floor," she adds with a frown, turning her back on Castle to check the board where, sure enough, there is a notation in Esposito's blocky writing that confirms Mike was found in an eighth floor closet, "He was staying on the thirteenth floor, so why the difference?"

"She wanted him out of the way," Rick says it a split second before her mind processes the information for herself, and Kate whirls around, a smile of satisfaction splitting across her face as he gets to his feet, his own grin matching hers.

"That's why she stole his keycard!" They both say it together, with enough volume that the bullpen seems to freeze for a moment and the attention of a couple dozen cops shifts from their own work to the two people grinning at one another like they've just won the lottery. Neither of them notice the attention, or the astounded looks that Ryan and Esposito are shooting their way, too busy smiling at one another and reveling in cracking open the case.

"The hotel said that Mike's keycard was last used at 2 a.m., right?" Kate asks, even though her eyes never stray from Castle's. He looks giddy, like a little boy waiting for permission to unwrap his Christmas presents, riding high on the adrenaline rush that she knows comes with finding that one thread that you can hopefully tug to put a killer behind bars.

He's never looked more attractive. It's a thought that floats through her mind and one that Kate quickly pushes away, unwilling to dwell on how he's standing so close to her, or how his tongue has darted out to brush across his lower lip.

She still remembers what that tongue can do.

"Right….."

Her lips purse with satisfaction at Espo's confirmation, that expression giving way to the scrape of her teeth against her bottom lip as Kate takes a moment to savor the first legitimate lead since she's stepped onto the case. "We need to go back to the hotel," she says, turning to look at the boys, " Let's see what was so important about Mike's room for Sophie go to the trouble of drugging him to ensure he wouldn't use it."

* * *

"Hotel records have Mike staying in room 1305 on Friday night," Kate says, consulting the small notebook that she nicked from Ryan's desk drawer when he wasn't looking, "And since no one has stayed in it since then and the NYPD hasn't allowed the hotel to clean the room, it should look as it did when Sophie was last inside."

Esposito holds up the key card as they approach the room in question, inserting it quickly into the slot. "Let's see what we've got."

The room is pristine, the only sign that the room is occupied in the suitcase lying open on the floor opposite the king sized bed that's still sporting the turn down service offered by the hotel.

Without speaking, Esposito turns towards the bathroom, flicking on the overhead light to begin his search and Kate strolls to the closet, opening the door to see a tux still hanging in its dry cleaner bag and a pair of polished black dress shoes resting on the floor. She's tugging on the blue gloves that are standard for crime scenes when Espo's voice floats back towards her, a forced casualness to the tone that automatically has her rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"That was quite a performance you and Castle put on at the precinct….." he says, and she turns with the dress shoes in hand in time to catch the detective's smirk in the bathroom mirror as he unfolds each of the towels in turn, checking that nothing has been stored inside them for safekeeping.

"It wasn't a performance, Espo," she sighs, plunging a hand into the shoes to feel for anything that have been dropped inside, "It was putting the clues together. Nothing more than that."

"Sure looked like something," he replies quickly, the heavy thunk of a toilet lid being lifted accompanying his words.

Coming up empty on the shoes, Kate places them back in the closet, reaching for the tux after a careful slide of her hand over the empty closet shelving. "Looks can be deceiving." Maybe it's not the best reply she could have come up with given the snort that she hears Espo give in response, but she ignores it, instead checking all the pockets of the suit as well as the jacket lining.

"They can," he continues after a moment of silence, Kate turning to hang the tux back and move on further into the room, reaching behind the dresser to feel for anything that might be taped to the back, "But sometimes they tell far more of the truth than words do."

His voice loses its odd echo as he steps from the bathroom, standing and watching her open all the drawers and close them in turn when she's assured they are empty before he speaks again, "Why didn't you ever tell us?"

She stops in her search at that question, one hand wrapped around the drawer handle of the last one she checked, "That I dated Richard Castle?" Kate asks, looking at him with some measure of surprise, "By the time you or Ryan came to the precinct, we'd been broken up for years. He got married again, he moved on, and it never seemed important."

"Even when you heard he was following us?"

"I was in training at Quantico by then, Espo," she sighs, opening the drawer to the desk that, like all the others she's looked at thus far, is empty. "Far away from the NYPD. Whatever my past was with Castle had no bearing on what he was doing with the two of you."

"I can understand that," Esposito says, kneeling beside the nightstand to check underneath it and then open the drawer, "But I think you're wrong about one thing."

"And what is that?"

"You said he moved on, and he hasn't. Not really. And I don't think you have either."

Kate doesn't let herself react beyond the fingers of her right hand curling into her palm as Espo finishes checking the nightstand and moves on to the suitcase that's spilling its contents onto the plush carpeting. Espo's the second person to point out that Castle isn't over her, but he's the first one to toss her into the ring with Rick.

She isn't sure how to feel about it, other than a renewed flood of the guilt that's been plaguing her since she shared a piece of her would-be wedding cake with Castle in the hotel ballroom.

With a sigh, Kate rubs absently at the dull throb that's beginning once again between her eyebrows, turning towards the final piece of furniture that they've haven't checked, the second nightstand, one that has been crammed between the bed and a connecting door to the neighboring hotel room.

A door that she realizes with a start is standing ever so slightly ajar.

"Hey Espo…." she calls, waiting until he's stopped rummaging through Mike's belongings to point towards the door, "Here's a question, why would the connecting door be open?"

"It usually wouldn't be, not unless you knew the person staying on the other side…."

Grasping the door handle with her gloved hand, Kate pulls it the door completely open and raises her other hand to touch the adjoining door. It creaks open at her touch, affording her a view of a hotel room that's identical to Mike's in furnishings and decor, but with the absence of a suitcase taking up space on the floor.

"What is so important about this room that you would drug a man to gain access to it?" Esposito asks as they both step into the room, a space where nothing seems out of place.

"If we figure that out, we might discover a motive for murder," she replies, skirting around the dresser and approaching the bed that, as with Mike's room, is wedged close to yet another connecting door. Her grip is firm when she grasps this handle, the door unmoving when she tugs at it.

The sparkle of something metallic catches her eye as Kate turns back towards the room, the morning sun streaming through the window to highlight the edge of what she quickly recognizes as a silver hoop. Even before she kneels down to pick it up, she knows what she's found, but she's careful in retrieving the earring from underneath the bed, grasping it between her thumb and forefinger and lifting it up to get a better look.

The earring is just what she expected, a small silver hoop lined with a row of delicate beads that make a soft clicking sound as they clink together with any movement. It's the mate to the one that she had last seen in Sophie's right ear, and a quick peek at the carpet underneath the bed yields Kate a couple drops of blood.

"One mystery solved," she says to Esposito with a grim smile, "There's a bit of blood on the carpet, so we've found where Sophie lost her earring."

"Still doesn't tell us what she was doing in here…."

"No," Kate agrees, approaching Esposito with the earring and sliding it into the evidence bag that he unearths from a pocket in his jacket. He's still in the midst of labeling the bag with a sharpie tugged from the same pocket when the whirr of an electronic lock sounds at the main entrance to the room, the door opening a moment later.

The gasp that falls out of Kate's mouth comes without her permission, her eyes going wide in surprise as Will's frame fills the doorway, his own face contorted with surprise.

"Kate what are you doing in my…" the question dies off once he spots Esposito, a flicker of understanding replacing genuine confusion and then, when all the pieces have slotted into place, a cold layer of anger and resignation.

"What are you doing with Sophie's earring?" she asks, something heavy and hard taking root in her chest at the way Will seems to deflate at the question. Whatever he might say to the contrary, Kate knows him, and the defeat that glides over him like a suit of armor is as good as an official confession that he's played a larger role in all of this than what he's admitted thus far.

For the first time since she saw Sophie's dead body, Kate asks herself one of the questions she's been steadfast in ignoring: could Will have possibly murdered one of his close friends?

* * *

When locked in a windowless room that contains nothing but a few chairs and a table, time is relative. What feels like 20 minutes proves only to be five when Will flips over his left wrist to look at his watch. He's already been waiting for over an hour, left to do nothing but stew over how he got himself into this mess and to stare at the one way window and the solitary door in turn, alternately wondering how many cops were watching him through one and which of them would walk through the other.

He hears the door handle click before he sees it move, the creak of the lock turning seeming to echo in the small room. Kevin Ryan, the other half of the partnership that brought him into the precinct and the cop that initially interviewed him yesterday, enters the room first, a thin file in his hands that he quickly drops onto the table.

Ryan doesn't really bother him, he seems to be a good cop and Will knows from conversations with Kate that he's a good guy, but he makes no move to greet him. No nod, no smile, just a dull stare. Though, really, it isn't Ryan's fault that this happened. He knew better than to withhold important information, how many times had it been drilled into him during academy training at Quantico to always tell the truth?

It's only through Kate intervening that he wasn't brought to the precinct in handcuffs and subjected to a couple hours in general lock up, and he's grateful for that, even if that feeling is currently at war with annoyance at himself for being so arrogant and careless.

He hadn't known Sophie's earring was missing, he hadn't seen her body beyond the glimpse that he managed before uniforms and crime scene technicians shooed he and Kate from the room. If he had known…

Will swallows against the thought that immediately pops into his mind, a bitter taste coating his tongue that is a perfect representation of how he feels. If he's honest with himself, he can admit that he would have gone looking for the earring, and certainly would have taken the time to ensure that it wasn't discovered in his room; the one piece of evidence that ties him to Sophie on the night of her murder and, in turn, has the power to wreck his life.

Despite himself, his eyes flick to the one way mirror on the opposite wall, and he can't help but wonder if Kate's on the other side, preparing to listen to everything he says. She's already angry, he knows that much, but by the time he gets to leave the room Will knows she'll be much worse than that.

The shuffle of footsteps in the hallway beyond the interrogation room quickly yields a second body, and it takes every ounce of control that he has not to roll his eyes at Richard Castle. With just a glance, Will notices the hard gleam in the writer's eyes, the way that his mouth holds just the shadow of a smirk. He's undoubtedly pleased to see him here, sitting in a chair that so many criminals have occupied through the years.

"I didn't do this," he tells Ryan as both men take seats across from him, the single door pulled closed by a uniform that he doesn't remember seeing at the crime scene yesterday.

"That's what all the guilty ones say," Castle replies before Ryan can even open his mouth, and Will scoffs at him, removing his hands from the tabletop and stuffing them between his knees lest he lose his temper and use his right hook on the man that likes to pretend he's a cop. "But you can save us some time and just tell us why you killed Sophie."

"I didn't," Will says a second time, sparing Castle a quick glance while Ryan keeps his eyes trained on the open file in front of him. "Sophie was a close friend of mine, I'd never hurt her."

"And yet we found her earring in your room," Ryan speaks up before Castle can unleash whatever retort he has for Will, "The lab confirmed the blood on the carpet matches Sophie Ronson's, and given that she was in your room less than an hour before she was killed we've got a good reason to believe that you were the one responsible for her death, Will."

"What happened?" Castle asks, and though his voice is casual, the ice that reflects in his eyes is that of a man that would like nothing more than to toss Will into a cell and throw away the key, "Did you tell Sophie to come up to your room Friday night? Get in one last fling before you strapped on the ball and chain?"

"Of course not!"

"Oh come on," he speaks right over Will's protest, "One woman for the rest of your life? That's quite the commitment. Why not grab another beautiful girl and get it all out of your system. Happens all the time, doesn't it? After all, you've known Sophie since you were kids, haven't you? Maybe it's not even the first time you've met up with her for a little rendezvous…."

"Castle….." Ryan mutters, glancing towards the writer as Will feels the muscle in his jaw begin to throb given how hard he's clenching his teeth. "Stop."

"I'm gonna be straight with you," the detective continues once Rick has gone silent, still staring daggers at Will from his place across the table, "This looks bad. I asked you yesterday when you had last seen Sophie and you told me that it was in the hotel bar before you went up to your room, that she and Mike were having a drink. And, now, not only do we know that you lied, we've got physical evidence that puts you with her just minutes away from her murder. You're a federal agent, Will. You know we can hold you at least 24 hours if we want, keep your lawyer tied up in all sorts of paperwork while we go digging around for more evidence; evidence that we'll find if you killed Sophie."

"I didn't!" Will repeats himself again, the fuse of his anger finally beginning to burn as Castle gives a small scoff and rolls his eyes in response to his denial. "Does he have to be here?" he asks Ryan, unclasping his hands to gesture at the writer, "He's not even a cop, and he clearly has it out for me."

"Then why don't you tell me something that will convince him to get off your back?" Kevin asks, "Because right now you are our best suspect. I'm giving you a chance to come clean, to tell me what you left out yesterday."

For the second time, his eyes rove towards the mirror and Will has an absurd wish for x-ray vision, some way to check and see who is listening on the other side. While he could ask Will knows he won't do it, unwilling to give Castle more ammunition with which to press him. If he asks if Kate is watching his interrogation, both writer and cop will want to know why and he just can't admit that he wants the first time his fiancé hears the story of his history with Sophie to be when he's got an opportunity to fully explain everything.

With a sigh, he lifts one hand, idly running his fingers through his hair, "I left the bar about one in the morning, and just like I told you, Sophie was still sitting with Mike and having a drink. I went straight up to my room, changed clothes and crawled into bed, and I passed out. My uncle Teddy had insisted on doing tequila shots before I left. I had already been on the way to drunk before that, so you can imagine where I was after three shots."

"I went to sleep, you know? I didn't know anything was happening until someone crawled into bed with me, and before I knew it a pair of hands sliding down my pants," he sighs again, giving one short look to the mirror that's full of the best unspoken apology that he can manage under the circumstances, "My first thought was that it was Kate, that she'd gotten lonely, changed her mind about spending the night apart…."

"It wasn't Kate, was it?" Ryan asks, ignoring the low rumble that he can hear at his side from Castle.

"No. I had….I mean, I kissed her before I had really opened my eyes, but I knew as soon as I touched her mouth that it wasn't Kate and I flipped out. When I opened my eyes and realized it was Sophie, I pushed her away, and she slid off the bed onto the floor. I guess that's when her earring came off, but she was standing up and hurrying out of my room before I could do anything else."

"And why was Sophie in your room, Will?" Castle's voice is dangerously low when he speaks, nearly predatory, "In my experience, girls don't just show up at your hotel room in the middle of the night unless they've been given a previous invitation."

"Detective Ryan….." Will begins, though he stops before he ever asks for Rick to be removed from the room. It's a lost cause given the look on Ryan's face.

"Answer the question," the detective says. "Did you have a sexual relationship with Sophie Ronson?"

He doesn't want to answer, and both of the men sitting across from him seem to know it. Ryan's looking at him with apprehension, whereas Castle is glaring at him like he would enjoy committing a second murder. "We did; years ago, way before I ever met Kate. But that whole thing was a mistake, beginning to end. I thought Sophie knew that, that she agreed with me that we weren't a good fit."

"Why did you lie yesterday?"

"I knew how it would sound," Will sighs, running both hands over his face as if the move will somehow allow him to escape from his nightmare, "And I didn't want Kate to know. I never told her that Sophie and I had a past."

"So in all the years that you've been dating Kate, even after she agreed to marry you, you never thought you should tell her that you had a relationship with one of your close friends?" The question is a clear challenge, Castle lightly poking at him with knowledge gleaned from their conversation in the bridal suite. Kate had told him about Rick, but he'd never done her the same courtesy, and that quiet accusation serves to burn the remainder of Will's patience until it's little more than a pile of ashes.

"You lied to your fianceé, just like you lied to the cops, Will. And you are right, your story about Sophie sneaking into your room? It isn't convincing. In fact, it sounds like a lie; a lie told by a man who is trying to avoid a murder charge."

"Castle!"

"Okay, I want him out of here!" Will yells over Ryan's reprimand, "He's discounting facts and gunning to put me in jail because he's still got a thing for Kate."

"You don't get to make demands," Castle replies, his voice growing louder to be heard over Will's continued protests, "Murder suspects are the ones who answer the questions in this room."

"Is that right?" Will asks, his whole body tense with anger that's made his face flushed and his jaw ache from grinding his teeth, "Well I'm done answering questions until he's out of here," he tells Ryan, watching the detective get to his feet and walk to the door.

It takes two quick taps on the metal door before it pops open, and Kevin stands there, his own blazing glare fixed on the back of Castle's head. The writer is still sitting in his chair, his own anger radiating from every inch of his large frame, but he doesn't move, not until Ryan snaps his name, "You're done," he says, making no move to acknowledge the grunt of annoyance that Rick gives, "Send Esposito in here, and we'll walk through your story again Will."

There's a certain vindictive pleasure in watching Richard Castle lumber through the door, in having Ryan slam it closed behind him and take a heavy seat back in his chair. Within minutes Javier Esposito has entered the room, his face contorted into an equally annoyed expression as he slides into Castle's vacated chair and asks Will to start at the beginning when he left Mike and Sophie at the bar.

* * *

In his anger, Rick allows his feet to carry him wherever they want to go. He ends up in the break room, leaning back against the long countertop that holds the espresso machine and the two standard coffee pots, fingers digging into the laminate countertop until his knuckles begin to turn white.

Will lied to Kate. It's the only thought that he can focus on; the sharp edge of his anger burning white hot. His protective nature demands that he lash out at something, preferably Will, to unleash the worst of it, but Rick settles for knocking his fisted hand against the countertop until it's throbbing with enough pain that it serves as a distraction.

"What the hell!" Kate's voice is shaking with anger, those four inch heels of hers tapping rapidly against the floor as she barrels into the break room. He can tell from the glare that she's aiming his way that she's furious, and it only becomes all the more clear when she steps right up to him and digs her pointer finger into his chest. "You have no right to accuse Will like that."

Whatever else he might have expected her to say, defending Will Sorenson a couple minutes removed from being given a play by play regarding his history with one of her bridesmaids would have been low on the list.

"He lied!" He doesn't quite yell the words, but they're said with enough force that it seems to ring through the empty break room, "He lied to you, he lied to Ryan and Esposito, and he purposefully mislead an investigation."

"And yet none of that gives you the right to sit there and imply that he would happily cheat on me, Castle!" Kate snarls the words at him, pacing a couple of steps away before she's spun on those heels and stalked right back to insert herself into his personal space once again. "What goes on in my relationship with Will is none of your business, and it's not your place to defend my honor!"

"I was only….."

"Trying to throw my fiancé in jail?" she asks, eyebrows raising towards her hairline as if daring Rick to contradict her, "Trying to get your licks in because you don't like him? Either way, it's not your place! I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself without your interference, and its not your job to steer the direction of a murder investigation! You aren't a cop!"

"So what? You are just going to forgive him? Pretend that nothing ever happened?"

His only answer is the flash of her eyes, the press of her lips into a thin line on her way out of the break room. By the time Kate's made it to Ryan's desk to gather her coat, Esposito and Will have stepped out of interrogation and Will darts ahead, hurrying to catch her and stop her from approaching the elevator.

He doesn't make it, reaching the elevator as the doors slide closed on one of those steely glares that Kate is so good at giving, and Will seems to sag against the metal barriers, one hand lightly smacking the flat surface with a muttered swear.

The elevator has arrived back on the homicide floor a couple of minutes after Will has shrugged into his coat, scowling at Rick when their eyes meet across the bullpen. He shrugs off any idea of returning the look, taking notice of Ryan's glance of warning and feeling the burn of Esposito's eyes on the back of his head.

The latter detective waits until Will has stepped into the metal cage, the numbered lights ticking downward to deliver him to the lobby before he stands up, striding the length of his desk and stopping directly in front of Rick to give him the second scowl that he's received in less than five minutes. "Do you know how lucky you are that Ryan and I haven't thrown you off this case?"

"Of course, I -"

"Don't talk," he snaps, extending a hand in the universal sign for stop, "I'm only going to say this to you once, Castle. You've got to stay away from Beckett and from Will. If you don't, I'm going to toss you into lock up for interfering with an investigation and just being a general pain in the ass."

"Wait a minute, Espo!"

"I'm the only one talking right now," Esposito says, plowing right over his objections to ensure that his point is heard, "You've still a thing for Beckett, I get it, we've all gone crazy over a girl before, but you cannot let that mess up your perspective on this case."

"My perspective?" Rick asks, staring at Espo with a mixture of surprise and disbelief, "Will was with Sophie less than an hour before she was killed!"

"That doesn't mean he's the one who did it. Twenty minutes would be plenty of time to get into Sophie's room and kill her, and Will isn't the only person that might have a motive to do it, but you want him to be the guy so badly that you can't see it."

"What are you talking about?"

To his left, Kevin Ryan gives a sigh, tossing down his pen and abandoning his paperwork for the moment to size Rick up, "You haven't considered this from the other angle," he begins, gesturing towards the photos of Will and Kate that are stuck on the murder board.

"Which is?"

"That Beckett killed Sophie," Espo says.

"Oh please, like Beckett would ever….." he scoffs at the two of them, wholly unwilling to even take a step down that path.

"She might," Ryan corrects him, "And if you weren't so set on pinning this on Will you'd be the first one to spin a story about how Beckett decided she didn't want to spend the night alone and that she headed to Will's room only to see Sophie leaving. Beckett told me in our initial interview that she went to her room just after 11 p.m., which meant that she wouldn't have known either Will or Sophie had just come upstairs; as far as she would know they could have a couple of hours together. And the idea that Will would cheat on her, that he would do so with someone in their wedding just hours before they were getting married, it upset her so much that she went to confront Sophie in her room. They argue, things get heated, and in a few minutes Sophie's dead."

"It would never happen," Rick repeats once Ryan has concluded his story.

"Which is exactly why you have to stay away from her, and Will, until we've closed this case," Esposito says again, pointing towards the elevator that is on yet another ascent from the lobby, "Go home, Castle. Get your head screwed on straight and come back tomorrow."

* * *

 _A/N: The book summary for A Calm Before is taken, in part, from the archived version of the Richard Castle website. Other elements, including Storm's visit to Kiev and Kadie Bennett are my inventions for the purposes of this story._


	4. Chapter 4

In most cases, running solves the problem. There had always been something soothing about tying on a pair of sneakers and beating out her frustration on the streets of New York and, usually, by the time Kate had returned home, soaked her tired body in a steaming hot shower, she would emerge from the bathroom feeling that whatever had been knotted up inside and overwhelming her wasn't as insurmountable as it initially seemed.

Today proves the exception, her mind and her heart still as heavy as they were when she'd hurried to dress for a run in her hotel room, eager to escape to the noise and the bustle of the run mapped in her head that carried her through the park and away from anyone that might be looking for her. She isn't surprised to see Will waiting when she emerges from the shower, wrapped in one of the fluffy hotel robes and her hair still dripping with water.

He's on his feet the moment he sees her, the face that she always had found so handsome looking stricken and on the verge of panic. "Kate, if you would just let me explain….."

The last thing she wants to do is hear more explanations, to listen to Will attempt to justify what he's done in the past two days. She wants to yell at him, to lash into him exactly as she had done with Castle at the precinct, and maybe getting a few shots in at the two men that have given her nothing but a constant headache and a gnawing, squirming pit of worry in her stomach since Saturday afternoon will ease her inner turmoil.

But the truth is that she just doesn't have the energy to fight, far too wrung out from everything that has happened and the punishing nine miles she'd forced her body to run. And then there is the part of her that loves Will, the portion that believes him incapable of killing Sophie despite the way the evidence is currently stacked. A part of herself that she once would have ignored come hell or high water.

Once upon a time, Kate had never looked at the whole story. She had been a believer in evidence, evidence provided the motive, evidence found the killer and brought justice. And obtaining justice, at that time, had been the sum total of her life.

Castle had been the one to teach her to look deeper, to crave for something that was more than just solving murders and, eventually, to hope that she might find it for herself.

Taking a seat at the end of the bed, she gives a sigh, discarding the towel that she had been using to remove the excess water from her hair. It should be simple, she thinks, there shouldn't be any lingering doubt or mistrust with Will if she believes the best of him but it's there all the same, whispering in her ear, taunting her with the reality that his lie has shaken something inside her, worked a crack into the foundation of their relationship.

Swallowing against that realization, Kate lifts her head, meeting Will's eyes. "Okay. Explain to me why you lied."

"I didn't want you to think that I had cheated on you with Sophie, so when the cops asked when I last saw her…."

"No," she cuts across his explanation softly, watching as Will's eyebrows furrow in confusion at her meaning, "Why did you lie about having a relationship with Sophie. Because I distinctly remember a long conversation about our past relationships one night at your apartment, and I was very honest with you. I told you all about Rick and Rogan and all the other guys that I had a decently long relationship with, and you just never thought to mention that you'd dated the girl that you always made it a point to stop and see when you were in Los Angeles for work."

"I didn't tell you because it didn't mean anything! Sophie and I dated for a few months, and we slept together a few times, but it was never right. She and I were always just meant to be friends…."

She's on her feet before she's really realized it, the burn of tears pricking at the back of her eyes. Kate can feel them building, demanding to be released in tandem with the flare of hurt that starts deep in her abdomen and she spins on her heels, putting her back to Will under the pretense of shuffling through her open suitcase until she's managed to get a handle on herself.

"Some friend," she mutters, unearthing a purple turtleneck and a pair of jeans that she tosses onto the bed behind her, hating the way that her voice still shakes with emotion. "I've never known such a short-lived relationship with a bit of casual sex to still be going strong years down the road, especially when the guy is engaged to another woman and the girl is friends with her. And you are kidding yourself if you honestly think that's all that this was, Will."

"What are you saying?"

Kate takes her time to get to her feet, a set of black underwear fisted in one hand when she turns back to look at him. She can still feel the press of tears clogging her throat, but she pushes forward anyway, "I'm saying that Sophie risked a hell of a lot. She drugged someone to get into your room, she came into your room to seduce you, but you think it was casual for her? That it didn't mean anything? Maybe it didn't to you, but you meant something to Sophie."

It's clear from the look that he gives her that he has no idea where she's going with her explanation, but it doesn't stop Will from crossing the room and eliminating most of the distance between them. "Even if that's true, it doesn't change anything. I never saw Sophie as more than a friend, and I certainly didn't invite her to my room. I didn't cheat on you, Kate. I'd never do that."

It's how he says it, the way that his hands lift to lightly grasp at her biceps and give the slightest squeeze of reassurance that eases the worst of the tension. This guy in front of her, the reassuring one that can stay so calm in a crisis and only wants the best for her, that's the Will that she knows, the one that she could be content with and agreed to marry.

The trouble is that being content might not be enough; not anymore.

"I believe you," she says, reaching up to brush the hair back from his forehead, "I don't think you cheated on me, and I don't think you killed Sophie."

"But..."

"But," Kate continues, giving him a strained smile because he can read her well, "You lied to me for years. Even if it meant nothing, even if you thought it wasn't important, you lied and I can't just pretend that didn't happen or that it doesn't leave me questioning everything else that you've ever told me."

Will looks as if he's in pain, dropping his hands so that they hand limply at his sides, "I love you, I've never lied about that."

The nod of acknowledgment that she gives him is perfunctory, that same strained smile on her face though she extends her hand to brush her fingers against his cheek, "I know, but loving someone doesn't necessarily mean that you trust them, and I'm going to need some time before I'm ready to do that again."

The disappointment is palpable, though Will gives her a nod of understanding before he retreats back to his chair, settling into it with a quiet sigh. Normally, Kate wouldn't think twice about untying her robe and getting dressed in front of him, but given the scope of their conversation, she hesitates, the hand not grasping her underwear hovering above the tie of her robe while she wrestles with the decision that ultimately sends her back into the bathroom, disrobing behind the door and slipping into the black lace set. She covers herself with the robe again, holding the two pieces of fabric together when she steps out of the bathroom, aware that Will's eyes are tracking her movements towards the jeans and purple shirt lying on the bed.

Her intentions are to ask him about dinner plans as she finishes getting dressed, and Kate's halfway into her jeans, the task made a bit awkward thanks to the bulk of the robe, before she can manage to form a word. Will doesn't seem to hear the start of her question, too busy forming his own. She immediately wishes that she'd never heard it, that she had cut him off and kept the conversation on trivial things like if they wanted to eat Chinese or Italian.

"Does this have anything to do with Rick?"

It repeats inside her head on a loop, each new pass serving to stoke the fire that is her anger at Will's jealousy. That one question, a single sentence, confirms what a part of her has already known but refused to admit ever since Will and Castle were formally introduced to one another; Will doesn't trust her anymore than she currently trusts him.

Her jaw is tight when she opens her mouth to speak, shrugging off the robe once her jeans are zipped and buttoned, a hand reaching out to snatch the turtleneck. "What sort of question is that?" she asks Will, flinging her arms into the proper holes. She holds her glare until the shirt has gone over her head, sliding over her small frame and settling against her skin with little more than a tug of adjustment at the hemline.

To his credit, Will doesn't shirk away from the look she gives him, he's too busy tossing out his own narrowed glance, "One that you need to answer," he responds, his voice cool and detached, an implication in the words that makes her blood burn with heat.

"You think I cheated on you with Castle?" Kate asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I didn't say that….."

"Then what are you trying to say, Will? That I'm asking for time to trust you again because I want to run off with him?"

She knows by the way his eyes drop to the carpet for the space of a heartbeat that she's grasped the heart of the problem, and just like that the guilt surges up, stealing her breath at the same time that the flood of hurt that Will would assume such a thing pours in.

"I think you care about him more than you let on," he says softly, and though Kate tries to keep eye contact with him, she finds that she can't do it when he's looking at her with such heartbreak in his eyes. Now she's the one looking at the floor, watching her bare toes curl into the carpet, the dark purple polish almost an exact match to the sweater she's wearing, "Or maybe just more than you'll let yourself admit."

"I'm not engaged to Rick," she replies, aware how pathetic and unconvincing of an answer it is. Neither she or Will seem to miss the fact that minutes ago he was the one trying to defend himself by insisting that a past relationship meant nothing.

"Maybe not, but he means something to you, and you and I both know it." Will tells her, and she's surprised that his voice is so matter of fact. In a lot of ways, she's standing in the room and waiting for what is left of their relationship to unravel, and Kate holds her breath, almost expecting for the final blow to come as he climbs to his feet. "I love you, Kate. I still want to marry you, but not if you're still harboring feelings for someone else."

He's slipped out of the room before she manages to find her words, his tall frame gone from the hallway when Kate follows his footsteps to go looking for him. Even as she curses herself for hesitating in chasing after Will, she accepts that maybe it's for the best, wholly unable to lie to herself and pretend that the words he'd left her with had been the result of jealousy or an overactive imagination.

Closing the door on the empty hallway, Kate leans against the white panel as the first hot rush of tears spills over onto her cheeks. She feels hollowed out; a shell that is constructed of nothing more than conflicted feelings, regret and guilt. Right now, standing with what feels like her whole life on the brink of being ruined, she'd give anything to talk to her mother, anything to have Johanna Beckett smile at her and give that slow, calm assurance that it will all work out.

The hole that absence has left in her life, the shadow that her mother's death has cast on practically everything for the past 12 years is the worst of it all. A gaping, endless wound that never seems to heal and the thing that she's never been able to reconcile or outrun. She'd pushed Castle away over it, had clung to Will to avoid it, but it's always been lurking as an ever present and inescapable companion.

Sinking down onto the plush carpeting, she gives up on fighting the tears, drawing her knees up towards her chest and covering her head with her arms as the first sob breaks free.

* * *

He knows exactly where to go in his office, brushing past a stack of news articles that pertain to information he needs for the case in his next book and discarding the pile of long forgotten junk mail that is unearthed at the bottom of the jumble.

The bottom layer of the drawer is nothing but notebooks. Varying in size, thickness and the color of the cover, they all have one thing in common: his early novels are contained in these books. Prose, plot ideas, diagrams and doodles all filling the pages in his scrawling, slanted writing.

It doesn't take long to spot the one he's looking for, the memory of when he was given that particular notebook practically burned onto his brain. Kate had given it to him on their fourth date, the date of which had coincided with his thirty-first birthday. She had been blushing as he unwrapped the leather bound book, explaining quickly that she figured a writer would always need a place to write, stammering and so sure that he would hate her gift until he had captured her mouth with his and convinced her that he loved it with something more than words.

The entirety of his third Derrick Storm novel is contained in the notebook, penned during the first year of a relationship where he'd thought nothing would ever break them apart. Kate working as a uniform and, shortly after Christmas, getting her first stab at a big time case with a stint in Vice. She'd been advancing in her career, practically living in the loft with he and Alexis, all of them happy with the unconventional family they seemed to be creating.

Even now, years later, Rick can't quite pinpoint where it all had changed. Hours usually spent at home with him were now spent locked in her own apartment, phone calls largely unanswered. Whenever he had asked what she had been doing, Kate had always remained evasive, and for a couple of horrific weeks he had been convinced she was seeing someone else.

He hadn't been wrong, not really. Something had gotten her attention, had pulled her away from their relationship and whatever they were attempting to build together, but it hadn't been a man, just a file folder full of witness accounts, interviews, and a trail of evidence gone cold with a death attributed to random gang violence.

Johanna Beckett's murder had become Kate's bedfellow and companion, her determination to find some kernel that the initial detectives missed an obsession that he had been unable to compete with. But even through it all, even when Alexis began asked over the summer for Rick to convince Kate to go to the park with them or take a weekend trip to the Hamptons, even when he had left his daughter in his mother's care to go over and bang on her apartment door, food in hand, and demand that she let him in and let him help, she had remained locked in her own stubborn need to do it alone.

Frowning at the memories, and making a choice to halt them there, Rick picks up the notebook, flipping through pages at random. The photo that flutters down to his desktop is one he's long forgotten about; the sort snapped with the sort of disposable, one time use cameras that the invention of smartphones made irrelevant.

Kate's laughing in the photo, her eyes twinkling with delight as they look into the camera lense. The backdrop of New York is behind them, the sparkle of the skyline filling the background that's visible above their heads. She'd snapped the photo before they'd left the rooftop restaurant he'd picked for his birthday date, sneaking a sloppy, wet kiss at the apple of one grinning cheek in the second before the flash had gone off. One silly, loving moment frozen in time and, weeks later, stuck in his book to serve as both a marker and a writing inspiration.

"What's that, kiddo?"

His mother is dressed in a sapphire blue evening gown, standing in his office at 8 p.m. looking for the world as if she's preparing to go to the Tonys or some other big time awards show. For a moment the sight of the dress, and the cascading string of pearls that decorate her neck, distracts Rick, leaving him blinking in surprise and eager to ask just what Martha Rodgers is planning to do with her evening.

He holds off with the question as she approaches the desk, extending the photo out so his mother can see who is in it. The look she gives to him is loaded when she passes it back, the blue eyes that she passed on to him soft and yet somehow full of caution. "You need to be careful, Richard."

"Of what? It's just a photo," or at least that's all he's willing to admit that it is. A photo of his past.

"Sure," Martha replies, one hand landing at her hip while the other stabs at the air with her usual theatrical flare, "A photo of a girl that you were madly in love with, one that just happened to step back into your life a couple of days ago, and who you've been talking about nonstop since you've been home."

"Kate was someone important to me, I'm allowed to reminisce, aren't I?"

"She's getting married, Richard," his mother deadpans, leaving him no room for misdirects or dancing around subtext, "And you aren't reminiscing, you are pining. Pining for a woman that is engaged to another man."

He catches a flash of red hair between the bookshelves that separate his office from the living room when his mother steps away from his desk. Rick knows his daughter well enough to gather from the narrowed curve of her eyes that she's heard most if not all of the conversation between he and her grandmother, and Rick sighs, eyebrows lifting towards his hairline in an exasperated invitation for his teenager to join the party.

"Gran, I thought these earrings might go with the necklace," Alexis begins once she's entered the office, passing two teardrop pearl earrings to her grandmother with a frostiness that there is really no room to misinterpret, especially when Alexis' eyes rove across the photo of he and Kate and linger for just a moment too long.

"Let me guess," he says, not even sorry for putting his daughter on the spot as he is, "You also think that I need to stay away from Kate."

Even when she's angry at him, it's rare that Alexis is rude, but his kid unleashes a stern roll of her eyes and a glare that would make the woman they're all discussing proud. "I think you should stop thinking with your hormones and consider that this is someone that walked out on you without a second glance," she snaps, "And if it happened once, I wouldn't be so eager to put myself through that heartbreak a second time."

Alexis is out of the room before the surprise has given way to let him say anything, the thud of angry footsteps filtering through the open shelving as she stomps up the stairs. There's a beat of silence, nothing but his mother's knowing look and the echo of street traffic five stories below, and then the slam of door that's following closely by the pursing of lips by the elder redhead.

"And that, my boy, is yet another reason you need to leave Katherine Beckett be."

"Because Alexis doesn't want me to get hurt?"

"Richard," Martha groans, rolling her eyes at him with a long suffering sigh, "I did not raise you to be so obtuse. Alexis is trying to protect herself as much as she's trying to protect you. She adored Kate, she loved her, and I think she thought the two of you were going to get married, that Kate would be her mother, and instead she just packed her things and left. Are you really surprised that she isn't eager to see you go down this road again?"

He gives his own sigh, heaving himself out of the leather chair that stands behind his desk, "It's not that simple, Kate's leaving was never because she didn't care... "

"Be that as it may, your sixteen year old daughter just remembers that someone she loved walked out on her and her father, and he was very sad for a long time," she speaks softly over him, her words interrupted by a knock on the front door, "And, now, she's doing her best to keep the both of you from being hurt again, because she loves you."

The shawl that Martha picks up from the armchair behind her is emerald green, and he watches his mother drape it carefully around her shoulders before she picks up the small beaded evening bag. "And your kid has a point, darling. What assurance do you have that if something were to happen with Katherine that she wouldn't pack up and leave again? I know, I know," she hurries to add over his protests, "You are an adult, you can take care of yourself, but it's still something to think about."

The second knock comes through and Martha gives a little cringe, hurrying towards the sound, "I'm off to the opera, don't wait up for me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Rick mutters in reply, lost in thought as his mother greets her date and slips from the loft with a quiet close of the front door.

* * *

She picks herself up off the floor once the tears have stopped, that hollowed out feeling so much stronger than it had been before her argument with Will. The room is stifling now, an expanse of space that only serves to remind Kate that this hotel suite is meant for lovers; everything from the two matching bathrobes in the enormous bathroom to the two champagne flutes and unopened bottle on ice that is complementary with booking the bridal suite.

Right now she should be on her honeymoon, just hours away from catching a plane at JFK and jetting off for two weeks of leisure in Paris and the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Instead, she's standing in the room, face swollen and blotchy and staring at a reality that entails no Will and no wedding.

Her dress is still hanging in the open closet, the jacket of Will's tux still draped on the back of a chair where he had left it yesterday, and it's too much. The guilt, the worry, the gnawing whisper that he's right and that she does have some residual feelings for another man; a man that had seen her through some of the worst spots of her life and only ever supported her and made her feel safe.

Kate's picked up her coat before she's really thought it through, slipping the camel colored wool onto her shoulders and unearthing a pair of brown gloves from the pocket. She drops the key card for the room into her pocket, scooping up her phone and her wallet with one hand and tugging open the door with the other.

The hotel hallway is empty, light sounds of televisions or the murmur of voices filtering from under doors as she passes, but no one steps out from their room, no one exits the elevator on her walk to the bank of them. With one touch, one of the double doors slides open with a chime, almost as if it has been sitting, waiting for her to come to the decision that she knows fully well might spell trouble for her life and all that it's been meant to be for months now.

But Kate climbs on anyway, punching the button for the glittering, crowded lobby where guests and sitting in small groups or strolling towards the restaurant and bar that looks to be overflowing with people. She ignores it all as she crosses the tiled floor, keeping her head down to avoid eye contact with anyone until she slips out the front door, inhaling the cold air of a late January night in Manhattan.

The taxi is in front of her, depositing a middle-aged couple that are conversing in what sounds like Portuguese to her untrained ears. Judging from their attire, she assumes they've just come from dinner, strolling past her and a waiting line of people that are expecting cabs to take them to their own destinations.

She ignores all of them; forgoing politeness and the unspoken rule of waiting your turn at a pick-up to slide into the backseat before anyone else can take it. The address falls out of her mouth before the driver can ask for it, and if he's surprised at her request he doesn't show it, just merely checks for oncoming traffic before he pulls out onto the street to deliver her to the destination that makes her heart beat just a bit faster in her chest.

There is an absurd notion within her that she needs to get some distance from the hotel before she pulls out of her phone, and Kate waits until the shadow of the building has gotten lost in the reflection of car lights and the glare of the city before she does. Like most things related to Richard Castle, she remembers his phone number by heart, and she dials it from the tiny cell phone clenched in her hand; hoping that he answers and then, in the same breath, praying that he doesn't.

It takes until the fourth ring, the low tenor of his voice curling through the speaker. "Hello?"

She has to take a moment, to swallow back the nerves, the longing, and the need for someone that knows her well to give her just a few words of comfort. Kate gathers herself, sinking back against the cushioning of the cab's backseat, "Hey, Castle."

"Kate." She hears the surprise as he murmurs her name, the slow inhale of breath that sounds not all that different from her own. He's nervous, too; jittery and a bit apprehensive, almost as if he expects her to start yelling at him again.

Understandable, given how they had parted that afternoon at the precinct.

"I shouldn't have yelled at you," she begins immediately, not willing to give Rick the chance to say something or, worse, hang up on her. "I was upset and frustrated, and I took it out on the first person that I saw, and I'm sorry."

Kate wishes she could see his face, that there was some indication of his denial or acceptance of her apology with which to work from, but all she gets is another slow breath, the creak of the phone and what she thinks might be the distant sound of a television. "It's okay," he finally speaks, and she lets out her own breath of relief, "You said it yourself, you were upset. You've had a lot happen the past couple of days, and I had some of it coming anyway."

She isn't sure if he's speaking of his gripping need for Will to be a murderer, a cheater, or both, but she decides to let all of it go. After the turmoil of the day, she has no energy for another fight, especially not one involving a man who had thrown the most recent blow.

Even if Will had the best of intentions, she's still smarting. Her mind and her heart and thrumming with the guilt and the pain of the choices they've both made.

"Are weddings always like this?" she asks it before she's really thought about the repercussions of the question, though the soft chuckle that greets her ear manages to put her at ease. Whatever her intentions were, Castle seems to be taking it in stride, not reading into any subtext.

"No," he speaks, his voice still pitched in that low, lazy rhythm that she remembers from late nights where they'd lain in bed, talking about all the things that mattered and a million others that didn't. His voice would always become slower and softer, the rumble of his speech vibrating through whatever part of her that happened to be curled at his chest. "Usually no one is killed at a wedding."

She can't help but thinking that Sophie's death was merely a side effect, the horrible, unthinkable thing that set a train into motion a bit early, but Kate bites back that thought, her eyes flicking towards the window where Midtown Manhattan flashes past. "I don't imagine the bride and groom spend most of the day fighting, either."

This silence is different, weighted by something that she can't readily define. Rick doesn't answer immediately, though she can hear the puff of air that escapes his mouth, the pregnant pause that follows it while he seems to measure what to say. "...sometimes they do."

Kate immediately understands what he's saying, her mind conjuring up a photo of Meredith as she had seen her the one time they had met just before Christmas during the year she'd been dating Rick and, then, the photo that she had seen in the _New York Times_ of he and Gina on their wedding day. Which one of his ex-wives he's referring to is up for debate, but her heart clenches with pain for him anyway.

And, then, for herself because all she and Will have managed to do is fight or avoid subjects that might send them into one. The only united front they seemed to have left between them were a rally against Eleanor Sorenson and the desire not to be married off immediately.

Neither situation were exactly votes of confidence.

"Do you regret it?"

She asks the question with hesitance, her eyes squeezed closed and her heart in her throat. Kate honestly expects that Castle will decline to answer, to bristle at being asked such a personal question by someone that he's not been in contact with for the better part of a decade.

It would be the least she deserved, prying into a history of which she had no part.

"Occasionally," Rick replies, his voice as soft as she's ever heard it. "I shouldn't have….."

Whatever he intended to say, he seems to think better of it because his words stop, and the silence is so complete over the phone line that Kate brings the phone away from her ear, checking that the connection is still there.

She doesn't press him anymore, though there's another hot prickle of tears straining at her throat, the emotion both for Castle and his two attempts at marriage that failed, and for herself and the uncertainty that has now filled her up regarding her own pending nuptials.

And then there is the history they share; the might-have-beens and what-ifs that seem to shimmer in her mind, taunting and teasing her about the possibilities that could have happened had she not been so afraid and so stubborn.

"Castle….." she murmurs, hoping that he can't hear the strain in her voice over the phone, "Can you meet me somewhere? I'd like to see you."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No," Kate tells him the truth, gripping the phone just a bit harder with the reality of it, "But I want to see you anyway." She leaves the rest of it unsaid, because while she has a meeting spot ready on her tongue, there is something unspeakably important about allowing Rick to set the terms and to have a say.

"The swings," he mutters, and she can't help the smile that spreads across her face. With two words, it's like a switch has been flipped and she's no longer navigating through the dark on her own.

She's already there; the cab pulling neatly to the curb beside a fenced in area with a small green sign displaying Columbus Park in white letters. The swings are to the left hand side, left to their own devices a bit away from the sprawling, primary colored equipment that makes up the rest of the playground.

"I'll meet you there," Kate agrees, withdrawing her wallet and paying the cab driver with a small smile before she's exiting the vehicle and winding her way down the sidewalk towards their designated meeting place.

* * *

It takes the better part of half an hour before he leaves the loft, inordinately preoccupied with picking the right outfit, fixing his hair, and trying to convince Alexis to open her bedroom door so he can inform her that he's going out and doesn't know when he'll be back.

The scowl his daughter gave him when he admitted that he was leaving the loft to go see Kate is still burned in his brain, as is the sound of her door slamming shut in his face as Rick hurries up the block. He's stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep them from going numb with cold, and he's glad for the striped scarf around his neck when a fresh gust of bitter January wind scoots down the street.

The sign informing park visitors that the playground closes at dusk flaps slightly with the breeze, the metal of the sign clanging against the wrought iron of the fence in a steady beat. He's known that there are laws in the city that prohibit adults from using playground equipment or hanging in areas designated for children without having a child to look after currently playing among the other kids, but as had been the case in the past, that law isn't enough to stop him from entering, nor is the one proclaiming the space to be closed.

If a Federal Agent will risk it, who is he to say no.

The path leading to the playground is clear, no leaves or flowers blooming in the dead of winter to clutter it up and, by now, park workers will have come by to pick up the more obvious litter and debris of any visitors to prepare the spot for anyone who visits the following day. As he walks, Rick notices the covered pavilion that dominates the center of the park and, beyond that, the field where Alexis had played soccer for one season. Even the basketball court had gotten a bit of use from him over the years, though it had been he and Kate involved in a heated game of H.O.R.S.E. that had culminated in her trouncing him and Rick claiming his own victory of sorts with a bit of aerobatics and one fantastic round of sex once they had gotten back to the loft and he'd managed to drag her into the shower.

The curving sidewalk turns into the playground abruptly, the large set of equipment in primary red, blue and yellow looking a bit off color under the dim glare of the street lamp that glows on the outside of the park fence. This set is new, a different one than Alexis had climbed on as a kid, but his memories are no less fond of watching his daughter and her friends or, later on in her life, of his red haired girl dragging a slender brunette around and insisting that they do everything together.

He bypasses the majority of the playground without stopping, the sidewalk in the beginning of yet another sharp curve to take a pedestrian towards the opposite end of the park. It's here that he steps off the path, feet crunching over frozen ground and dead leaves, and leading him towards the old, battered set of swings where a woman sits in a wool coat, her hair in wild waves as they cascade down her back.

By now, he's grown used to the way she steals his breath when he sees her, how his heart needs to skip a beat and acknowledge her presence. Kate watches him approach, and in the dim light it's hard to read her eyes until he's standing in front of her. They're soft and welcoming, just enough of a smile at her lips that he's tempted to do what he had grown so accustomed to in their time together by leaning down and touching his mouth to hers.

Instead, she lifts a hand, passing him a familiar cup that's full of hot coffee; the same coffee that he made it a point to bring her every single morning that he could, even if it meant a commute across the city and sneaking up to a piece of crime scene tape to deliver it.

"I thought this was my job," he teases her with a smile, sitting himself on the empty swing at Kate's side before he takes a long drink. It's strong, the roasted beans dark and rich on his tongue and then the slight accent of what he knows to be nutmeg; an extra kick that she had picked up when Meredith had stormed into town, upending their life just before their first Christmas together.

"Consider this a repayment for the hundred plus that I owe you," she replies with her own grin, lifting a cup to her lips for a swallow of her own coffee. From the sweet smell it has, Rick suspects her order is just the same as it was back then, a burst of familiarity that warms him just that much more.

The silence that bounces between them isn't strained as they both sit and sip at their drinks, quiet swallows and the occasional sniffle of a nose gone cold and runny breaking up the sound of traffic along the streets that ring the park. Kate finishes her coffee first, lofting the empty cup into a nearby trashcan, and he takes one more long swig, draining the drink before passing her the cup so that she can repeat the action with another soft swish.

"Does Will know you're here?" he asks once the cup has found its home in the bin.

Her responding laugh is hollow, more bitter than amused. "No," Kate adds once her chuckle has faded, her face strained and the shadow of anxiety creeping into her eyes when she looks his way, "I would guess that Will is currently in a bar with Keith or one of his other friends, drinking as a way to distract himself from the fight we had when he got back to the hotel."

"Over Sophie?"

The way she quickly presses her lips together is enough to let him know that it's not simply the murder that has put Kate and Will on edge, and he doesn't have to look very far to guess what the other source of the trouble is. The guilt at causing her pain is as sharp as a knife, slicing through a conscience that Rick had steadily been ignoring with definite precision.

She doesn't notice how he squirms in his seat, Kate's eyes trained on the ground while she wrestles with what to say.

"Sophie," she agrees, "And you."

Even though he had known, hearing her admit it pushes the breath out of his lungs. Will had made no secret of his dislike, a feeling that is mutual for Rick, but he hadn't really expected that it would spurn the sort of fight between Will and Kate to put such sadness in her eyes.

"Will explained explained why he lied to Ryan and Esposito, tried to explain why he lied to me about his relationship with her. He's sorry he did it….." she continues, twisting her fingers around the chain of the swing with a small grimace.

"Are you sure about that?" He asks it before he can stop himself, wincing at the heated look that Kate lifts her head to give him, those expressive eyes glittering with frustration and narrowed with enough anger that Rick finds himself wiggling around with something other than guilt on his mind.

"Will might have been an idiot about this entire thing, but he isn't a murderer, Castle," she replies quickly, "He's a good man and even if he messed up, I believe that he had good intentions. I can forgive him for lying about Sophie coming into his room and for trying to keep that from me. But lying about his entire relationship with her…"

"You don't trust him anymore," he finishes for her, feeling his heart crack a bit at the nod Kate gives.

"As it turns out, he doesn't trust me either," she adds with a sad smile, glancing back at him so that their eyes meet in the shadowy light of the street lamp.

There it is again; the breath in his lungs escaping with a soft exhale at all the unspoken things that one sentence indicate. If Will doesn't trust her, it has to be because of him, of their history and the connection that's still steady and bright between them. Rick has to pause, to take a couple of breaths and fight against the flutter of hope, the press of nerves and expectation that begin to churn in his gut. It's ridiculous to feel this way, to be so on edge regarding a woman that he has absolutely no claim to, but he can't really fight it.

Nor, if he's completely honest, does he want to.

He hopes his face has arranged itself into a passable representation of curiosity when he speaks next, carefully pitching his voice so that it sounds innocent and casual when he poses his question. "Why?"

The eye roll she gives him is enormous, her lips pursed at him in the way they used to when she couldn't believe what he was saying to her. But, usually where she would tease him or respond vehemently that he was either flat out wrong or completely insane, Kate's voice is soft and shaky, "You know why."

And he does know. With those three words, Rick can no longer pretend he hasn't had a hand in Kate sitting beside him and looking like her world has fallen apart. Even now, sitting inches away from her in the dark, he can feel the electricity that crackles between them; their chemistry still a wonderful, tangible thing that he's always been terrible at denying himself.

He doesn't pretend otherwise, simply accepts the situation with a nod of his head while Kate keeps her eyes focused on her hands, the diamond of her engagement ring twinkling in the hazy light.

"How have you been, Kate?" Rick asks her, intent on changing the direction of their conversation, and taking note of the surprise that ripples over her face when she lifts her head. It intrigues him that such a simple question is one that she didn't expect, but there were parts of her that had always remained such a mystery to him. In so many ways, she had been an open book, but in others it had been like chipping away at an iron wall that remained steadfast and never yielded any of her secrets.

"...busy," she supplies after a moment of silence, slowly sending the swing she's sitting on into a gentle rock with the roll of her foot along the hard ground. "I've moved three times in as many years, and I bought the plane ticket for my honeymoon with frequent flyer miles," Kate tells him, wrinkling up her nose.

"Can't be too busy," he challenges lightly, meeting her eyes as he too begins to lightly move back and forth, "You had time to meet Will, fall in love and plan a wedding."

"Oh, I hated Will when I met him," Kate replies, "I thought he was an over confident jackass that thought he was way too important because he was part of the FBI, and I didn't shy away from letting him know it. But he didn't really like me much either, though I expect he'd lie and say otherwise now. Second day of knowing him, he called me a small-time cop and I threatened to shoot him…"

"Did you meet him on a case?"

She gives a nod, her eyebrows drawing together with the memory, "A kidnapping. Second case I pulled after I got my detective's shield. Four year old boy was kidnapped in a playground while his mom sat on a nearby bench."

"So what changed?"

It takes her a moment to answer, a shadow sliding over her face while she weighs the words she want to say. "...the next time I met him, I was in a better place. He wasn't as arrogant as I thought, and I wasn't as wounded or as broken as I had been, and the case we worked had a happy ending. So when he asked me to get a drink after we closed it up, I said yes."

The story has something deep inside burning with hurt, the circumstances in which Will Sorenson had managed to win over Kate not that different from his own. True, she hadn't hated him when they'd first laid eyes on one another, but their first real beginning had started by his asking her out following his arrest by a girl wearing a uniform and doing a routine patrol.

"You were supposed to come back to me," he tells her softly, his cheeks flaming with embarrassment at admitting such a thing even though she had been there when the conversation had taken place in his loft, "Once you got a handle on everything, you were going to come back."

The look she gives him is one that shimmers with a hurt that Rick knows is on his own face, the ghosts of possibility and loss slinking from the shadows to visit each of them, "You got married, Castle." Her reply is soft, and though her voice is steady, she can't quite manage to hold his gaze. "You looked happy in the papers and the news reports, so I moved on. I found someone that I could be happy with, too."

"And are you happy?"

Rick knows it's a loaded question, but he can't help himself in asking. No matter their past, no matter the burgeoning well of hope that's so often sprung to life when they've been together in the past few days, he'd walk away in a heartbeat if that's what she wanted.

"I…." Kate starts, dipping her head until her hair has fallen in a curtain over her face. "I was."

"Was?" He can't help sounding surprised, just like he can't help how his hand darts out to snag the chain of her swing, stopping its movement and twisting his arm so that Kate's now facing him. "What do you mean, 'was'?"

For a moment, he's sure that she won't answer, that their conversation is going to end with her walking away and never looking back. The fear is etched plainly on her face, at war with a longing that flickers in those eyes that are so dark and so wide as they stare back at him. "Before Saturday," she begins, her voice barely more than a whisper, "I was happy. I knew exactly where my life was going and what I expected out of it."

"Kate, Sophie's death shouldn't change that. You can't let someone else's actions rob you of -"

"It's not Sophie," Kate speaks over him, waiting until he's stopped talking to say the thing that has his heart kicking into overdrive, "It's you."

"Me…." It comes out in a whisper, the only sound he can manage when his throat has gone dry and his heart is doing its best to climb out of his ribcage.

"You walked in that hotel suite and my entire life has been a mess ever since," she tells him, the glassy shine of tears now beginning in her eyes. "And now I don't know what I want, or what to do."

"Would it help if I told you that I missed you?" Rick asks, reaching out to catch the tears that have spilled over onto her cheeks. The curve of her skin, the sharp angle of her cheekbone still fit into his palm like it was made for his hand, and he doesn't miss how Kate tilts her face into his touch, how her eyes flutter at the contact of skin on skin.

"I missed you, too," she admits softly, shifting from her spot on the swing to bring herself that much closer, "I had forgotten how much."

Her lips taste like coffee when they meet his, the groan slipping out of his mouth unbidden as he draws Kate towards him, cupping her face with his hands while he kisses her like a man who has spent years drifting and just found an anchor.


	5. Chapter 5

As expected, Lanie is hard at work when Kate steps into the morgue, her bright pink scrubs standing out amid a room full of blue walls, silver instruments and white cabinets. Her closest female friend is bent low over a microscope, one hand focusing the lense to get a better look at whatever has been scraped onto a slide, the other scribbling in a shorthand that she doubts anyone but Lanie herself will be able to decipher.

Still, the medical examiner isn't so absorbed in her work that she doesn't hear the click of Kate's heels on the tile floor, and Lanie lifts her head from the equipment with curiosity and, once she's put a face to the sound, surprise.

"I thought I recognized those shoes," she tells Kate with a grin, tugging off her gloves and depositing them in the trash can at the end of the long row of cabinets to step forward and give her a hug, "What are you doing here, girl?"

Kate returns the hug, though she doesn't quite pull off the ready smile that her friend has when she pulls away to look up at her. She can't, not after a mostly sleepless night where guilt, longing, and regret all battled for control in the mixed up pot of conflict that she's cooked up for herself.

She had kissed Richard Castle. Kissed him until her lungs had begun to burn and demanded a replenishment of oxygen. She had kissed him and, immediately, considered if she should do it again.

She hadn't, but hours later, Kate swears she can still taste him on her lips almost as if she had spent the night stealing kisses in the shadow of a park.

"I wanted to talk to you," she tells Lanie in answer to her question, taking a seat on the rolling stool that's been pushed underneath the stainless steel table where autopsies are performed. It's empty for now, any bodies awaiting dissection and study regarding the cause of death stored in the containers that line the far wall.

Lanie's dark eyes are narrowed with suspicion from the moment she takes her seat, the curl of her lips pressing into a neat, noncommittal line. "Alright, we can do that," she says, temporarily turning her back on Kate to pick up a large pan full of instruments that have been dunked in some clear solution that smells strongly of bleach. The pan is placed on the table with a dull clunk, the liquid sloshing against the sides, and Lanie quickly adds a tray next to it. "What's on your mind, Kate?"

"I kissed Castle."

She says it quickly, adopting the philosophy that it's best to just put it out there. Much like ripping off a bandage, Kate thinks it might go over easier, but she sees Lanie's eyes go wide with surprise, watches her body jerk with it so that the forceps she's been carefully drying off go skittering from her hands and bounce across the tile floor.

"You what!"

"I kissed Castle," Kate repeats with a sigh, dragging both of her hands through her hair with miserable little groan.

"Does Will know about this?"

"No."

"Kate Beckett….."

"I know, okay," she groans again, covering her face with her hands for a moment, keen to avoid the steely glare that Lanie's giving her. "I know exactly what it sounds like, and I've been beating myself up about it since it happened. I feel horrible."

Lanie has picked up the forceps from the floor, placing them on the countertop where a myriad of other instruments and supplies are resting in various containers and piles, and while she isn't glaring when she turns back to look at her, there is a certain measure of disappointment in her dark brown eyes. "Then why did you do it?"

She knows why, but Kate finds that it takes her a moment to find her voice. "Because I've never gotten over him; not really," she tells Lanie softly, realizing that she's twisting her engagement ring up and down her finger, "I thought I had, but I saw him again and it all just…..it came right back."

"Oh, honey," Lanie gives a sigh, scooting around the table to reach out and grab one of her hands, "You never told me that you still cared about him."

"Because I didn't know how much," Kate replies, annoyed that she can feel another swell of tears building up and clogging her throat. How many times has she cried in the past 24 hours? She can't even remember, but she also can't seem to fight them off, "But I do and I just…" she pauses, swallowing back the worst of them in the hope that they won't spill over, "I kissed him," she says, "Will and I had a fight and I was upset, I wanted to talk to Castle, apologize for yelling at him and we got to talking about why we broke up. And I couldn't help it, because he still cares about me and I just leaned forward and kissed him. I keep trying to tell myself it didn't mean anything, that I just did it because I was upset, but….."

"But you don't think that's why," she replies, her gaze when Kate meets Lanie's eyes just a little too understanding.

But Kate doesn't deny it, giving a slow nod of her head even as the guilt rises up again, bringing a fresh wave of self hatred with it.

"So what happens now?"

"I wish I knew," she sighs, using her free hand to swipe underneath her eyes, "I know I have to tell Will, and he's going to be so angry and so hurt over this. We're already struggling after everything that has happened and this….." Kate pauses, grimacing at the thought even before she gives it a voice, "He's been worried about Castle since they met."

"With good reason," Lanie says, "Look, Kate, I met you after things ended with Castle, so I can't speak to your feelings about him or your past, but I've seen you with Will and you've been happy with him. You love him, and he loves you. Are you sure you want to risk that?"

"I love Will, Lanie," Kate's proud that her voice is steady when she speaks, some resemblance of control of her emotion coming back to her, "He's a great guy, but….."

"Castle," Lanie supplies for her.

She gives a nod, the slightest shrug of her shoulders to indicate how helpless she feels. "He's always been the one that got away," she admits, tugging her lower lip between her teeth as something seems to loosen in her chest once she's said the words out loud.

"Then maybe you're supposed to get him back," Lanie tells her, giving Kate's hand a soft squeeze, "You're my friend and all I want is for you to be happy," she adds with a smile, waiting until Kate has lifted her gaze from the tabletop to meet her eyes, "You've got to go where your heart leads you, even if that isn't the easy or the safe choice."

* * *

There's a certain spring in his step as the elevator deposits Rick onto the homicide floor; the coffee carrier secured between both hands with two cups rather than the usual single he carries into the bullpen. He's managed to balance the box of pastries on top; donuts, bear claws and other assorted baked goods crammed into the container that holds more than enough to feed the entire bullpen.

Today's the sort of day that he feels absurdly generous, the smile on his face so eager and so wide that his cheeks are beginning to ache but he just can't quite turn it off. It's impossible when he can distinctly remember the feel of Kate's mouth on his, the way she'd sighed into the contact and pulled him that much closer.

Rick takes his time in exiting the break room after he's dropped off the box, snagging a chocolate frosted bearclaw from the selection within that he carries with him to his usual spot. Kate isn't there waiting, a disappointment to be sure, but Ryan and Esposito are already at their desks, each of them lifting their heads at his approach to give him matching looks of disapproval.

Esposito's warning about staying away from Kate rings in his head, but he presses on anyway, smiling at them as if nothing could be amiss as he takes his seat. "Good morning, Detectives," he says and while Ryan stays silent, Espo gives a snort of derision.

"Do you have a hearing problem, Castle?"

Whatever question he might have been expecting, that one certainly wasn't it, and it throws him for a moment. All he can do is blink at Esposito in confusion, eyebrows drawing together while he tries to work out what the detective is getting at, "No….."

"Did you hear that, Ryan?" Espo asks, swiveling in his desk chair so that he can easily glance over at his partner, "He doesn't have a hearing problem after all."

"Huh," Kevin replies, "Are you suffering from short term memory loss?"

"No…" Rick says, flicking between the two of them in turn, and obviously the guy who is missing the joke. "Why?"

"No reason," Ryan says, shrugging his shoulders, "We were just trying to figure out why you would interference in an active police investigation."

"What do you mean?"

He's no sooner gotten the words out of his mouth than Esposito has dropped a file folder on the empty patch of desk in front of Rick, his eyebrows raised towards his hairline. "Go ahead, open it," he says, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back in his chair.

Rick has to find a spot to deposit Kate's coffee and the bear claw he's wrapped in a napkin before he can flip open the file. The woman who he's supplied breakfast is inside the folder, the angles of her face thrown into stark contrast with the lighting of the park. She looks like a movie star from the 1940s with those big eyes and sharp cheekbones as she sits on a swing with two cups of coffee identical to the pair he's brought to the precinct in her hands.

There are more photos after that one, photos that include Rick strolling up to meet her and the two of them involved in what he knows was a very intense conversation. With every new photo that he flips to, the two of them seem to be inching closer to one another, drawn together like a pair of magnets that are wholly unable to resist the pull that is exerted on opposite poles.

His stomach gives a quick flip at the next photo because, in it, he and Kate have collided, mouths fused together and hands gripping at one another like their lives depend on it. He's blushing by the time he's made it through the entire folder, a mixture of embarrassment at being caught and the still vivid memory of how she had tasted combining to leave his cheeks stained a deep rosy pink.

"All we did was kiss," he mutters, closing the folder before he does something ridiculous like try to steal the photo where Kate's grinning at him while he laughs at something she's said.

"Which is quite an achievement considering I specifically told you to stay away from Beckett," Esposito says, picking up the file and putting it back on the other side of his desk with what Rick assumes is other information and evidence pertaining to Sophie Ronson's murder.

"Why did you have me under surveillance anyway?" Rick asks both of them, both shocked that they would go to such lengths and, if he's honest, a bit hurt that they did.

"We didn't," Ryan responds with a roll of his eyes as he gets to his feet. "Surveillance was set to tail Beckett since she's a murder suspect. Good thing, too, because if we hadn't had anyone on her, we'd never have caught you two playing tonsil hockey in the park."

"Tonsil hockey?" Espo groans, snatching up a small rubber ball from beside his computer monitor and flinging it towards Ryan's back as he scribbles on the murder board. It connects with his right shoulder with a light smack, bouncing back onto the floor towards Esposito's desk as Ryan gives a howl that largely muffles his partner's snort, "What is this? Seventh grade?"

As amused as he is by both Ryan's description and Esposito's reaction, Rick cuts across their bickering by raising his voice just a bit, "Sophie's murder was a crime of passion. An isolated incident. You've got no reason to suspect Beckett."

"Your opinion is what we would call a 'conflict of interest'" Esposito replies, bouncing the ball between his feet a few times, "given that if Beckett killed someone, it's gonna be awfully hard to ram your tongue down her throat when she's in jail." The grin he gives to Rick is merciless, and he doesn't even need to look to know that Kevin is doubled over with laughter.

"Both of you are jackasses, you know that?" Rick tells them, scowling in their direction until they've both worked through their laughter.

"So are you, bro," Espo says quickly, tapping the closed folder, "I told you to stay away from her so you wouldn't interfere with the case. Chances are that Beckett didn't do it, but until we find who did, every person connected to Sophie is a suspect, which is a fact that I know that you know."

"If Montgomery gets ahold of these before we close the case, he's going to throw you off of it," Ryan adds, taking a stack of paper from one of the file clerks with a muttered word of thanks as Rick sighs.

"She called me last night; wanted to apologize for yelling at me after you kicked me out of Will's interrogation," he says, "She was upset with Will, angry at the entire situation and when she asked me to meet her…..I couldn't say no. I've never been able to say no where Kate is concerned."

"You shouldn't have gone…."

"I know that," he replies, cutting off Esposito mid-sentence, "But I don't regret it. There were things that I've needed to say to Kate Beckett for a long time, and that was my chance to say them."

Ryan at least looks sympathetic when he steps over to pass Rick a stack of paper that a quick glance shows to be Will's bank statements. "I never really would have thought you and Beckett….." Ryan says with a shrug, ignoring Esposito's glare, "Neither of us knew you two when you were together, but she's…..she's different from your ex-wives. Down to earth. Compassionate….."

"She's different than any woman I've ever met," he admits, keeping his eyes on the financial records so he doesn't have to see the look that exchanges between the two detectives, "But it wasn't meant to be. Not then."

Clearing his throat from the sudden well of emotion, Rick lifts his head, holding up the sheaf of paper, "Anything specific we need to look for?"

"Anything out of the ordinary," Ryan replies as he takes a seat, snagging a highlighter from the shallow drawer in the center of his desk. "If Will and Sophie were having clandestine rendezvous, it'll show up."

* * *

"Will isn't your guy."

Ryan, Esposito and Castle all raise their heads in turn from identical stacks of paper, three pairs of eyes focusing on Kate as she stands in the doorway of the conference room that they've commandeered for their searching.

She steps into the room with all the authority she can muster, laying her coat on the back of one of the chairs before she hands the forensic report across the table to Ryan, "Lanie's official report. I went to see her this morning and she gave it to me to save you a trip to the morgue," she says, sliding out a chair to take a seat and doing her best to ignore the sparks of electricity she can feel from Rick's eyes being pinned on her.

"No forensic evidence other than the earring ties Will to Sophie's murder," Ryan reads from the paper, giving her a second glance to confirm the information. She nods her head immediately, a small relieved smile playing at her mouth.

"Lanie also said that the wounds on Sophie's back have metal deposits in them, and if we can find the object that caused them, she can match them. She's emailing photos of the abrasions to both of you."

"Well, we can't find any evidence that Will was involved with Sophie. For a man that has a trust fund, he sure doesn't spend like it," Esposito tells her, and Kate feels yet another weight lift off her shoulders at the news. Even if he's only confirming what she already knew, it's nice to have the doubts that have been roaming around in her mind silenced. "Most of his purchases seem to go towards the usual expenses: rent, car note, utility bills and the most extravagant thing he's bought in the past two years is an engagement ring and a plane ticket to Paris."

"Sophie is a different story," Ryan picks up when Esposito pauses, keen to do something about the wounded look Castle has on his face as he looks at the ring Beckett is still wearing on her left hand. "She was broke. There is only eighteen dollars in her bank account and all of her credit cards are maxed out. She withdrew her last one hundred dollars to come to New York."

"We had been told by Eleanor that Sophie was having some money trouble," Kate replies, pulling a small pile of papers towards her, "She called Eleanor about a month after our engagement party and asked her to pay for her flight and when Eleanor said no, Sophie called Will and told him that she couldn't be in the wedding."

"So what changed?"

"Will was the one who wanted her included and his mother is far too traditional and uptight to let him have a girl be part of his party, so I asked her to be a bridesmaid; mostly because it was important to him. When she said she had to drop out I decided not to replace her," she says, "But then she called back in October and told Will that she had changed her mind, that she'd solved her money problems and wanted to be in the wedding if we would still have her."

"That didn't seem suspicious to you?" Esposito asks.

"Not really. Everyone comes up short from time to time, and Will just said that she'd gotten a new job so I just let it go and forgot about it."

All four of them lapse into silence once she's finished explaining, the three cops in the room flipping through paper while the writer sits with a mind full of memories and questions. Rick had expected that the next time he saw Kate, she'd be without her engagement ring, that she and Will would have had a discussion that culminated in the end of their relationship.

He had been so sure after last night, after their talk in the park and the kiss they had shared that Kate wouldn't stay with Will but, now, he can feel the disappointment and the hurt creeping in. Maybe Alexis and his mother had been right, maybe Kate wasn't to be trusted with his heart. Hadn't she already broken it before?

"...Ryan, how much did Gamble say that Sophie paid him for the drugs?" Esposito asks, interrupting Rick's pity party before it can really get started.

"Two hundred in cash," Ryan replies, tapping on the notation where it's written on the murder board they've wheeled into the conference room.

"So how did she get the money? Even if she withdrew that hundred bucks to buy the drugs, she was still at least hundred short. There is nothing in her bank statement that indicate she made any charges on her way from Los Angeles, and she didn't have enough credit left on her cards to charge it there. So how did she pay for food or a cab from the airport to the hotel? There's nothing at all after that last withdrawal."

"When did Sophie take the money out of her account?" Kate's voice has an edge to it, prickling at all of their ears with what feels like the beginning of a new thread to pull. She's sat up in her chair, a certain measure of expectation and knowledge brimming in those green eyes before anyone can answer.

"Wednesday."

"A day before she left to fly to New York City…."

"I thought Sophie arrived on Friday. Laurie and Lanie both told us that the first time either of them saw her was the luncheon that you had for them," Ryan replies, pausing when Kate lifts her arm and passes him a piece of paper.

"That's because we all thought she did arrive on Friday, but according to that flight manifest, Sophie was here in Manhattan on Thursday."

"So what did she do between Thursday and Friday?" Esposito asks the room at large.

"Dunno," Kate replies, "But it might explain where she got the extra money."

"Doesn't explain how she paid for her dress or her flight," Rick speaks up, shaking himself out of his moping to watch the three cops in the room with him start putting the pieces of the case together. Ryan and Esposito are looking at him with confusion, but there's a look of understanding in Kate's gaze which is to be expected given that she's recently planned a wedding. "Kate just said that Sophie told Will she had come into some money, and they both assumed it was because she'd gotten a new job, but if the increase in income had been a job, it's not likely she would still be broke. I've got statements from September, October, and November and her checking account balance is never over four hundred dollars."

"Her bridesmaid dress cost nine hundred," Kate mutters, her cheeks burning dark pink when Ryan and Esposito turn to her with shock on their faces. "Her shoes were another two hundred."

"How in the hell…" Esposito swears.

"Eleanor is a believer in spending extravagantly," she sighs, answering the question that no one dares to ask, "She planned most of our wedding, including picking the dresses for the bridesmaids. I picked the color, but not much else. Certainly not the price."

"I don't know a girl alive who isn't obsessed with picking and coordinating every detail of her wedding. My sisters were maniacs," Ryan says, a different sort of awe in his voice when he looks at Kate. "You are to be commended, Beckett. Handing over control like that."

"It's hard to keep control when you are on the road all the time with work," Kate admits, fidgeting in her seat when all three of them continue to stare at her. She knows what it sounds like, how it appears to most people that she'd been so unconcerned with her wedding. She had told herself at the time that the ceremony had been the important part, though she had never said it aloud to anyone that but Will, too concerned that people would think she was lying to cover disinterest with platitudes. "Anyway, Sophie would have spent at least a couple thousand to be in the wedding with the dress, the shoes, the flight and the hotel."

"So the money came from somewhere else, since she definitely didn't have that kind of cash," Rick adds.

"But where?" Espo sighs, staring at the murder board with a long sigh.

* * *

"No, Laurie, you were great," Kate mutters into the phone, scratching absently at the headache that's been persisting between her eyes for most of the afternoon. She and Ryan had hit the phones immediately after they'd found the flight manifest, talking to everyone from her cousin Maria to Will's Great Aunt Ruby, a woman with a loud New Jersey accent who knew every bit of gossip involving the latest season of _The Real Housewives of Atlanta_ , but couldn't tell Kate a thing about Sophie.

Even her dad, who she had called with reluctance because Jim Beckett would immediately hear her frustration and hesitance from the moment she said hello had been little help, though he had insisted that she meet him for dinner.

Laurie Hill, the one person she had maintained contact and a friendship with since Stanford, is the last on the list, and Kate crosses her name off as she hangs up the phone. Three hours worth of calls had given her nothing but a throat that aches from overuse and shoulders tight with tension.

She doesn't know where Esposito and Castle have gotten to, but it's a relief to have spent some time without Rick's gaze following her everywhere. She had spent the morning pretending not to notice the curious or the wounded looks he sent her way, or the multiple times she'd caught him staring at her engagement ring with a frown on his face. Kate hadn't asked him what the fascination was with the ring. She already knew.

They had kissed and Rick had taken that to mean she was leaving Will.

Just the thought has her stifling a groan, burying her face in her hands while her head gives another insistent throb of pain. She knows there is likely a bottle of aspirin in the first aid drawer in the break room, but Kate makes no move to stand up and retrieve it, instead using the moment of silence to internally berate herself for the choices she's made in the past 48 hours.

The reality is that she's scared. Scared to break Will's heart, scared to accept Castle's. Scared of making the wrong choice and ending up with nothing.

"Kate."

The sound of her name has Kate jerking her hands away from her face, Will's hesitant smile the first thing that she sees. He's standing at the side of Esposito's desk, her old work space, watching her with concern and a bit of worry. Even so, she's happy to see him, and she summons up her own tired smile, pushing the rolling chair away from the desk to get to her feet with the intention of giving him a hug.

He wraps his arm around her carefully, the contact still a bit stiff, but she leans on him anyway. It's comforting and familiar; she fits against him like they were made to go together but, now, it feels wrong. Now, Kate knows what isn't there.

There is no spark, no frisson of shock and pleasure that slices across her skin. If it were ever there, it's been gone for so long that she can't remember the last time touching Will seemed to make her come alive and it makes her inexplicably sad.

"You look exhausted," he murmurs once she's pulled away, sliding her hands into the pocket of her dress pants. "I can get you some coffee if you want…."

"No," she says quickly, placing a hand against his arm to keep Will from rushing off anywhere, "I'm on caffeine overload as it is. I just need sleep."

"And for this to be over," Will supplies, glancing around the bullpen, "This place looks exactly the same."

"Budget cuts," Kate hums with a shrug of her shoulders, "They don't leave much room to redecorate."

Her joke doesn't seem to find its mark. Will's response is a blank look of confusion, one that doesn't last very long as the elevator opens to deposit another group of people onto the Homicide floor. At the front of the pack Kate spots Eleanor, her dark hair carefully styled to brush her shoulders and a red dress topped with a black coat covering her tall frame.

"Will, darling!" Eleanor announces, making sure that her voice carries just enough in the crowded bullpen so that cops and civilians alike will take notice of her. She's elegant in how she approaches her son, giving the lightest hug and a quick kiss to his cheek that has Will's face showing the hint of a blush that she never notices. "Hello to you as well, Kate."

"Eleanor," Kate replies neatly, her face a mask of politeness. "What brings you here?"

"I was asked to come down," Eleanor says, "One of the detectives called, they want to ask me some questions about Sophie."

From the look that Eleanor saddles her with, her future mother-in-law is in complete disapproval of being asked to present herself in a police station, which is all the more reason Kate has to press her lips together to stop her grin from forming. It's not funny, not really, but she and Eleanor are so completely at odds that she's long since just accepted her joy at seeing the woman thrust into unideal situations for what it is.

"Ah," she says once she's mastered control of her expression, spinning lightly on her heels to see Ryan nudging his way between two uniforms with apology written on his face. "Here's Detective Ryan now."

"Mrs. Sorenson, Will," Ryan addresses them as he approaches, "Thanks for coming down. We've got just a few questions that we want to ask you. Beckett, if you'll take Mrs. Sorenson, I'll take Will and we'll get this taken care of. Shouldn't take long."

He's good, Kate will give him that much, because Ryan has no sooner asked her to deal with Eleanor than he's swept Will off towards the empty break room and left the two of them standing in the bullpen.

"Let's get on with it, Katherine. I have far better things to do today than this." Eleanor says, interrupting her preoccupation with watching Will take a seat on the battered couch in the lounge. It's just as well because a moment later Ryan has closed the door, cutting off her view of him.

"Follow me," she tells Eleanor, resisting the urge to turn and take her towards interrogation to instead stroll through the rows of desks. The conference room is still empty, and Kate holds the door open for the older woman, securing it behind her once she's crossed the threshold.

She picks her chair carefully, choosing to sit at the head of the table to force Eleanor into one of the other seats that ring the perimeter. It's nothing more than a slight purse of her lips, but Kate sees the disapproval anyway.

Eleanor Sorenson liked to have control. She especially liked to exert it over people who didn't fit her ideals, so wrenching it from her, even in something as small as seating arrangements, is its own small victory.

This is Kate's room, her space to control, and she doesn't acknowledge any of it the woman's disapproval. She just slides her notebook and pen over from the seat adjacent and lifts it to the paper to make a quick notation of the date, the time, and who the interview is being conducted with.

"We retraced Sophie's steps leading up to her murder," she begins, deciding it's best to explain why an additional interview is needed. "I know from previous statements that you've made to the police that you thought Sophie arrived in New York on Friday, is that correct?"

"When you say 'we', are you implying that you are a Homicide Detective?" Eleanor asks, a combination of amusement and spitefulness on her face. "I didn't know that FBI Agents could also work for the NYPD."

"I've agreed to help the department with this case," Kate explains quickly, "So if you'll just answ-"

The voice that cuts into her sentence is painfully polite, though Eleanor's eyes are shooting daggers at her from across the table. "Oh, I see," she says with the slightest nod of her head, "So, if I'm to understand this correctly, you offered to help the New York Police Department to solve a case and, in the course of helping them, brought my son and your fiancé into this building and allowed him to be interrogated for murder as if he were a common criminal."

"Yes," she answers, using every measure of control that any of her law enforcement training has taught her to keep her voice and her face emotionless.

"Hmm," Eleanor sighs, her dark eyes roaming around the room for one overly critical pass before they land squarely back on Kate. "I wonder what it must be like to be that callous. It truly is a special type of person who wears the physical representation of commitment and love on her hand and not only arrests the man who gave it to her, but helped locate the evidence to earn him a trip to jail. What Will continues to see in you, I have no idea."

Kate can feel her hand trembling with anger, a boiling pit that bubbles up from somewhere deep in her gut. Eleanor's dislike of her had never been a secret, but it had always been something that she and Will had taken in stride. But, now, it ricochets across the room with the same force as if Eleanor had reached across the table and slapped her.

"Answer the question," she says softly, ignoring the flare of pain and the hurt, "Did you believe that Sophie Ronson arrived in Manhattan on Friday?"

"Of course," Eleanor replies, "That was the first time I saw her. Shopping in the hotel store."

"And you didn't ask her about her flight or any of her travel arrangements?"

The sigh is one of exasperation when it comes, accompanied by the slight roll of her eyes, "I didn't mention it. I complimented the dress that she was buying when I saw her, recommended the seaweed wrap that they do in the spa and I left. Given that Sophie and I had a disagreement over money, specifically over this trip in particular, it would have been rude to bring it up. She clearly wasn't lacking for money, and that was the important thing. She picked herself up and made her own way."

"Did you talk to her after that initial meeting?"

"In passing, I'm sure, but nothing significant."

"And no one told you about speaking to her, that Sophie had mentioned coming to New York a day early?"

"I've already said no," Eleanor replies, "Now do you have any other questions, or can we put an end to this incredible waste of time?"

Kate is torn between saying yes just so Eleanor will leave the room and taking her time in writing up a set of notes on the interview just to further annoy the woman. She goes with the latter, slowly composing her thoughts and impressions to paper and replacing the cap on her ballpoint pen when she's finished.

"You can go," she says, "But we might need to speak to you again."

She sincerely doubts that they will need Eleanor again, but it's immensely satisfying to see how annoyed Will's mother is as she gets to her feet, "Let's hope not," Eleanor replies, swinging her enormous leather handbag onto her shoulder before she strides out into the bullpen.

* * *

"I've had a brilliant idea."

Castle looks less like the dejected and sad man that had sat across from her earlier in the day when he hurries into the conference room, waving what looks to be a generic dvd case in the air. "Your explanation about the bridesmaid dress started it. We know Sophie got her money from somewhere, but we haven't been able to trace it through her bank account. But she bought a bridesmaid dress and a pair of shoes, and, lucky for us, Eleanor Sorenson has expensive taste. So expensive that there were only nine boutiques in Los Angeles that sell that particular dress in that color."

He looks cute, pacing back and forth in front of the table with his eyes sparkling with the excitement of a lead that also seems to fall into the category of being a good story. Despite herself, Kate feels the beginning of a smile forming, and she lifts her hand from where it's been fisted under her chin to discreetly hide her mouth. It's a welcome distraction from the swirling thoughts in her head and Eleanor's rather effective dressing down. Rick's excitement forces Kate to pull focus from the moping and internal debate that she'd been having since Eleanor left, her voice carrying through the bullpen and insisting that Will take his mother to lunch.

Will hadn't stopped to ask if she wanted to go, he hadn't even looked for her, which was just as well given the tension between them and the fact Kate wanted nothing to do with his mother for the time being.

"Espo and I called all those stores, asking for the names of individuals who had purchased the dress from September to December and we got a hit," Rick rattles off, waving the disc case yet again, "And this is freshly downloaded security video from the store in question where, it so happens, Sophie paid for her dress and all the accessories, in cash."

"You can add rent payments to that," Esposito adds as he leans into the room, "Just talked to Sophie's landlord and her last three rent payments were all in cash too."

Kate is still watching Castle with amazement, incredibly proud of his investigative prowess and impressed at what his brain can do. "Shall we watch a little bridal shop surveillance?"

The three of them have to go back into the bullpen, crowding around Esposito's desk chair as the disc loads on his computer. The video begins to play immediately; the angle looking to be from the corner of the room as Sophie enters from an adjoining space with a woman that Kate suspects is an employee at the boutique.

Sophie's tugging at the dress when she enters, fussing with the wrap that had been, according to Eleanor, intended to add both elegance and modesty. The full glimpse that the camera shows of her face is brief, but Kate's instincts demand that she take notice of the apprehension that clouds Sophie's face, the reluctance in her body language when she turns to the right and steps out of camera range.

The angle changes quickly, shifting to another view of the room that is much wider than the first. From here, you can see racks of dresses hanging on walls, the shadow of a trio of mannequins in the distance and, once again, Sophie. She steps forward tentatively, stopping in the center of the frame to face a figure that can't been seen at first.

When the body lumbers to its feet, Kate can't help but gasp, covering her mouth in shock. She doesn't need to see the face to know who is in the video, but Teddy crosses over in full view anyway, walking in a slow circle around Sophie to give his nod of approval.

"The boutique owner confirmed that Teddy paid for the dress in cash," Esposito says, "Sophie told him as they stood at the counter that she didn't know if she could go through with the plan. And he told her that he'd gone to a lot of trouble and fulfilled his end of the bargain and now it was her turn."

"I just don't get it," Kate says, glancing at Espo and Castle in turn as if they can flip the switch that will suddenly gift her understanding. "Teddy was supplying Sophie with money? Why would he do that?"

"Doesn't matter. This is enough to drag him in for a more official chat," Espo replies, stopping the video playback and carefully scooting his chair from the desk. "Lucky for us, Uncle Sugar Daddy is due for a visit in an hour for his follow up interview, we don't even have to send uniforms to pick him up."


	6. Chapter 6

"Kate, what the hell are you doing!"

From her position near Captain Montgomery's currently vacant office, all she has to do is turn on her heels to see Will. He's pissed, stalking through the bullpen without sparing a glance to anyone that might separate him from her, the same sort of intimidation that he would use against criminals rolling off him in waves.

She doesn't take it personally, though on some level it is annoying, but she does dread the fact that this conversation is now going to be held in the midst of a lot of curious onlookers. Kate is sure that trying to push Will towards the observation room or some other less crowded part of the homicide division wouldn't go over well.

And with that in mind, she bites her tongue until he's come to rest in front of her, his blue eyes cold and radiating fury.

"How did you find out?"

"My mother called. Teddy was late for an appointment with her, and she was concerned since this was the last place he was meant to be," he supplies, biting off the consonants with annoyance, "I tried to call you and you didn't answer, so I came down to check and your desk sergeant informed me that he suspected you were interrogating Teddy Murphy for murder."

"First of all," she begins, extending both hands in the universal sign to stop, "Sergeant Reynolds isn't mine, I don't officially work here anymore. But -" Kate raises her voice slightly, cutting off whatever interruption Will had planned with her own stern look, "He told you the truth. We've compiled enough evidence to hold Teddy with probable cause and conduct an official interview. Ryan just left to execute a search warrant and when we have the results of that search, Teddy will be interviewed as the prime suspect in Sophie's murder."

It hurts to see the way Will's face changes. It's not just anger that she sees now, but surprise and disbelief. He's shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels with a long suffering sigh, "Teddy barely knew Sophie. Why would he hurt her!"

"I don't know yet," she tells him, cautiously reaching a hand out to touch his bicep and somehow both hurt and entirely unsurprised when Will shrugs her off, "But we're going to find out."

"He's been like a father to me, Kate," Will snaps at her, and there is less blistering anger and now just a deep hurt that squeezes her heart in a painful way. "How could you let them throw him in jail like a common criminal! You're supposed to be on my side, and on his! Who got us our marriage license? Who organized our pre-nup? Teddy has been nothing but encouraging and supportive, which has been a blessing in light of my mother and her opinions about our relationship, and this is what you do to repay him? Accuse him of murder?"

Though she gives it a valiant effort, Kate doesn't manage to hide her wince. Most of the people currently occupying the floor are former co-workers and, if not friends, acquaintances of hers and they've now been treated to a far more intimate look into her personal life and her relationship with her fiancé and his family than she ever would have wanted them to know. Just from the measure of the room that Kate takes with a glance from the corner of her eye she can tell that most of them are trying to pretend they haven't heard the altercation, but the buzz in the bullpen isn't as active as it would otherwise be in the middle of a workday. They're all listening, even in they don't necessarily want to be.

Sighing inwardly, she reaches forward and snags the open edge of Will's coat and uses most of her physical strength to drag him towards the back hallway and the doors that lead to both the observation room and interrogation. He doesn't fight her on it, following with another huff of annoyance that only serves to further piss her off, but Kate doesn't stop until they've reached the empty observation room and Will's been ushered inside to the soundtrack of the door that she slams shut behind them.

"And now that you've managed to embarrass the both of us in a room full of cops," she tells Will, letting go of his coat to place her hands on her hips, "I'm going to explain something to you, William Sorenson. I've worked in law enforcement for eight years. I've solved hundreds of cases both as a lead and as an assistant investigator for both the NYPD and the FBI. And I have _never_ hauled in a suspect without evidence that is sufficient enough to put them behind bars, and if you ever again imply that I would manipulate or lie in an investigation to make someone else look better or to put someone in jail without a case to back it up? I'll kick your ass."

"That's not what I…."

"Your upset," Kate continues right over his explanation, "I get that, but I'm here and working on this case to give you closure. I'm not here to hurt you, or to hurt your family. Your mother is the one that would make, and has made, those blanket assumptions, but I'm here to find a killer and to make sure that you don't spend years wondering who would do something like this to a friend."

"Because you don't want me to go through what you have with your mom," he repeats with a sigh, "I know that, but Teddy wouldn't…."

"Teddy has been paying Sophie for months, Will. He's the reason she decided to be in the wedding; he paid for her dress, her flight, and her hotel."

"That's your evidence?" he scoffs, glancing for the first time away from Kate's face to the one-way mirror that shows Teddy sitting alone in the interrogation room, looking distinctly annoyed and frustrated, "Teddy's been like a father to me since my dad died. Do you really think the guy who helped me move into my college dorm and that helped me gather the courage to propose to you wouldn't step in to help someone who was important to me and that I wanted to be present for my wedding?"

"He would," Kate admits, glancing into interrogation, "But that doesn't explain the rest of the money he's been giving her. We talked to Sophie's landlord, she paid her rent in cash, and it's only a matter of time until we trace that money back to Teddy."

The realization that the evidence is real and currently stacked against Teddy seems to sink in when the shock and anger begin to burn away. Will's face goes slack with resignation, and she takes the opportunity to step forward and slide a battered chair from the equally dinged desk that has been crammed into the far corner of the room. "I can't believe this," he mutters once he's taken a seat, a hand rubbing across his face and then tunneling through his hair, "There has to be some explanation. He isn't a killer. An accident or…"

The or is left out in the air, and Will lifts his eyes to hers, a silent plea written in them for Kate to fill the blank with some ray of hope.

She doesn't do it, unwilling to lie to Will and allow him to convince himself of something that won't be true. They've got more than enough to connect Teddy to Sophie and provide motive, and if the hunch she had is right, they'll have physical evidence that connects him to the crime scene as well. "You know I am not doing this to hurt you, don't you?"

The smile he gives is sad, strained at the edges with a tension that matches what she's been able to see in his eyes for days now. For the first time, Will seems to let her see all of it, the riot of emotion, exhaustion, and reservation shining back at her. "I know that you didn't do it on purpose," he finally offers, "That will have to be good enough."

"Will…." Kate doesn't know what she intends to say, just that she has to try.

He stops her with a wave of his hand, "It doesn't matter now, Kate," he replies, "What matters is getting through it."

Reaching out to touch him isn't as instinctive as it once would have been, but she lifts her hand up anyway. Her fingers thread through his hair with a gentleness that has his eyes slipping closed, a small bit of tension draining from his face and his shoulders when she continues outlining a path over his forehead and down the side of his face, tripping over the shell of his ear and the sharp angle of his jaw.

By the time she's cupped his face in both of her hands, Will's eyes have fluttered open and met hers with that same resigned acceptance, and all the unspoken things they've yet to say aloud seem to swell between them. "Do you want me to-"

The door opens with a sharp bang, bouncing away from the wall with enough force that the one-way mirror vibrates with the contact and Kate spins to face the noise, her hands dropping from Will's face. Castle's standing in the doorway, and the way his eyes are reflecting surprise, worry, and annoyance are enough context clues for both she and Will to understand that he'd caught some part of their exchange.

She wants to roll her eyes, but Kate resists, instead giving a pointed glance to the writer, "Can I help you?" she asks.

"Ryan's on the phone, he says he found something that you will want to know about," Rick replies, shuffling out of the way so Kate can slip past him and back into the bullpen where Esposito is sitting at his desk and waiting for her to arrive to learn about the latest case development.

* * *

With Kate out of the room, the fact he's been left alone with Will Sorenson for the first time since this whole investigation comes to Rick. He'll admit that he's no fan of Will's, least of all because of his jealousy that he has something Rick wants for himself, but given that he's been let off the hook for Sophie's murder, he can't quite see being openly rude.

Not given everything that he knows will be happening in a matter of hours.

"Will," he says by way of greeting, and he's given one brief jerk of the head that seems to be Will's acknowledgement of him. With those pleasantries disposed of, the FBI Agent turns his attention to the one-way mirror, his eyes dark and more than a bit troubled when he stares at Teddy as he continues to wait alone.

"You must be loving this," Will says after several minutes of silence, his face contorted with a grim smile, "Kate and I fighting at every turn, someone I'm close to pinned as the prime suspect in a murder that stopped our wedding…"

Loving it isn't the description that Rick would give; he's seen the strain that it's put on Kate, and he's not quite callous enough to wish that she be put through such an emotional ringer for his own benefit. Likewise, even though he's made a living killing people on paper, he's never been the sort to wish an untimely end for anyone.

"I think it'd make a good book," he finally says just to give Will an answer, his eyebrows raising as the other man gives a snort.

"Oh of course," he replies, "I'm not surprised a third-rate author would think that the uncle of the groom killing a bridesmaid would be a good story."

"Third rate?" Rick asks, though Will either ignores him or doesn't hear him.

"I'm just waiting for someone to come and tell me that Teddy's also been in love with Kate this whole time and he convinced Sophie to sleep with me to stop the wedding. Hell, maybe they even decided to make a trade," he says, sarcasm dripping from every syllable he utters, "Teddy gets to sweep Kate off her feet, and Sophie gets another shot with me. We all live happily ever after."

"What do you mean _also_ been in love with?"

Will gets to his feet with a sharp inhale of breath, and in one step he's close enough to Rick that one of them could so easily reach out and strike the other, "You know damn well that that means," he says and there is no room for arguing or pretending otherwise. Rick can't be sure what, if anything, Kate might have told Will about their conversation the previous night. For just a moment there is a slight spike of fear in his blood, but it's burned out by anger. It's as much at himself for being the person that now has Will facing some significant doubts about Kate as it is his need to defend and protect her no matter what.

"I don't," Rick lies, both of his hands winding into fists as he speaks, "But if you've got something to say then I think you should go ahead and say it."

Will doesn't back down from the challenge, but he does lower his voice, leaning close enough that Rick is momentarily struck by how similar in color their eyes are. Right now, Will's are a stormy grey-blue, glinting and hard with anger, "I love Kate," he murmurs, "She means everything to me. Maybe you won't let yourself see it, or maybe you just don't care, but I love her and I want to marry her, even now."

"What if she doesn't want to marry you?" Rick asks before he can stop himself, but it doesn't matter because the door to interrogation has finally opened and Kate has strolled in with Esposito on her heels. Immediately, Teddy begins his plea, and though he's clearly annoyed at having been left in the room for over an hour he's doing his best to appear happy and jovial to see her.

Judging by the cold glare Kate gives in return as she drops a stack of files onto the tabletop, the feeling isn't mutual.

* * *

The amount of pleasure that she receives from watching the smile slide off Teddy's face would be worrisome if not for her history with Will. As it is, Kate lets the satisfaction of knowing that they've closed the door and solved the case sweep through her while she takes a seat across from him, Esposito sliding into the chair at her right.

"Is there any reason you've kept me waiting for over an hour?" Teddy asks, holding up the hand that allows him to display the shiny gold Rolex clasped to his wrist.

Despite herself, she wonders whose money paid for it: Teddy's or Will's.

"We did actually," she replies, tapping the stack of files with her right hand, "You see, we had to go looking for some things before we could talk to you; fill in a few blanks about why you killed Sophie Ronson."

The disbelief that Teddy puts on display for she and Esposito is good, and it's almost good enough to be convincing if not for the bleed of panic that can be read in eyes that are such a similar blue to his nephew's.

"What are you talking about?" Teddy asks, "I told these cops before," he says, gesturing to Esposito, "That I barely knew Sophie. Why would I kill her?"

"That's what we kept wondering," Esposito says, "Why would a guy who barely knew a bridesmaid go to the trouble of murdering her? Coincidentally, answering that question is why you've had to wait so long. We had to get a warrant and then search your office and your home, which took a while. Actually, it could have taken much longer, but you didn't exactly go to much trouble to hide your files or the paper trail, so once we knew where to look it was quite easy."

Teddy's look towards Esposito is one of loathing and frustration, the man barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes, "A layman like you can't possibly understand the complexity of the clients and the documents that I deal with on a daily basis…"

"I don't have to understand all of them," Esposito replies with a shrug, "Just the file that named you the executor of the trust fund that Will's father set up for him and maintained until his death when Will was 11. But it's nice to know that you think I'm stupid."

Kate feels her anger reach its boiling point, whatever goodwill she might have fostered for Teddy evaporating behind his dismissal of Esposito, "When Will's father died, you took over and you did well. So well, in fact, that the initial amount in the trust fund doubled as the investments you and your brother chose were profitable. But that was before the market crashed," she explains, narrowing her eyes at him, "You took a big hit, and rather than make adjustments in your lifestyle you began stealing from Will."

"A house in the Hamptons, a Ferrari, probably that expensive watch you're wearing," Espo adds.

"You burned through nearly five million dollars, practically the entire contents of his trust fund. A fund that, coincidentally, Will would inherit on his wedding day," Kate continues, and though she sees the shadow of guilt on Teddy's face, she can't find it in herself to care. Sitting in this room, so close to wrapping this case, she knows that Teddy's greed and his selfishness have destroyed this part of her life.

"What happened, Teddy?" Esposito asks, leaning forward to place his folded hands on the tabletop, his voice as conversational as if the three of them are sitting here and discussing the weather. "Did you panic when Will told you that he was getting married? I've seen your bank statements, your list of assets. You're hemorrhaging money and there was no way you could raise the equity to put all that money back, and you knew it was just a matter of time until Will noticed."

"And what could you really do?" Kate picks up on Esposito's story, the muscle in her jaw jerking and pulsing as she grinds her back teeth together in anger. "Will and I were in love, we weren't going to break up on our own, but you had to stop the wedding. And then you met Sophie; a girl that you knew had a past with Will and still carried a torch for him, someone that was desperate for money. Desperate enough and unhappy enough to just maybe carry out the only thing you could think of to stop a wedding."

"This is ridiculous," Teddy huffs, rolling his eyes at the pair of them, "You don't know what you are talking about."

"You convinced Sophie to seduce Will before the wedding and, I'm sure, once she had done the deed, she was going to make sure that I found out."

Esposito is careful when he lifts Sophie's cell phone out of the bag, clicking several buttons until the home screen pops up, "Initially, we didn't look for any deleted videos or photos on Sophie's phone. It didn't seem connected to our case," he explains, opening up the appropriate app, "Did you know Mr. Murphy that even when you delete something that it's never really gone? Sophie had set her phone's settings so that all her photos and videos were automatically uploaded to cloud storage."

The phone screen goes black for a moment, and there is a distant rustling of blankets, and the creak of a bed. Even though she knows it's a necessary evil to lay out the case they have against Teddy, Kate can't help the roll of nausea that pops up, the way that her heart begins to ache. She's already seen the video, and she knows what is coming, but it doesn't help to assuage her own guilt.

Will was a good man. A good man who loved her deeply, who had resisted temptation when it was offered, and she had done so very wrong when it came to him.

The low hum that comes through the speaker after a few moments of silence is Will's, a slight chuckle that has her name whispered somewhere in the middle. It's still dark in the video, nothing more than a black screen with the occasional patch of deep blue, but the sound of kissing and a soft, happy sigh are distinctive until a sharp gasp cuts through the air.

"Sophie, what the hell are you doing here!"

"Come on Will, you and me, one last time?"

They can't see it on the video, but Will's snarl echoes crystal clear through the speaker, "Are you serious? Stop it. I'm getting married tomorrow to the woman I love, get out of here!"

"I just thought…."

"You need to leave, now," Will adds, and then there is another gasp, the sudden thunk of what sounds like a body hitting the floor and a muffled sob that continues as the phone is picked up and the sound of rapid footsteps are echoed by the slam of a door before the video rolls to a close.

"We found Sophie's cell phone in her room, with two separate sets of prints on it," Kate says, clearing her throat once the video has concluded and hoping that neither Teddy or Esposito have taken notice of the way her cheeks are flushed with color, "One set were Sophie's. When we take yours, what's the likelihood that we're going to find a match for the others?"

"The time stamp from the video being deleted from Sophie's phone also coincides with what our medical examiner has determined to be her time of death window," Esposito adds, "But that's what I'd call icing on the cake."

Teddy merely raises an eyebrow, parting his hands from where they've been clenched together on the top of the table, "It's a good story," he concedes, "But how are you going to prove that I killed her? Even if I paid her money, even I had asked her to stop Will's wedding, none of that is proof that I murdered her."

"He's right, Beckett," Espo says, contorting his face into a frown, "Stupid cops that we are, we'd _never_ have considered looking for physical evidence to connect him to the crime."

Kate's shrug is noncommittal, though her fingers have already reached into the pocket of her blazer and plucked the small evidence bag from its depths. She holds it up in silence, keeping her eyes focused on Teddy's so that she doesn't miss the moment where he knows with completely certainty that they've got him on all counts.

He doesn't disappoint, mouth going slack with surprise and his eyes flashing shock when they dart between herself and Esposito.

"Esposito told you that they served a warrant to search both your office and your home," she explains, her voice low and full of bite, "We found the financial records we needed in your office, but in your home we found this in your still unpacked luggage," Kate tosses the evidence bag across the table, the tie tack contained within landing with a dull thud, "It's platinum right? The same metal that we found deposits of in the wounds on Sophie's back; wounds that you made while you were strangling the life out of her because she had a conscience and didn't go through with the plan when Will pushed her away."

"You could have just walked away, bitten the bullet and told Will the truth, but instead you decided to kill her. You murdered an innocent woman to keep your greed and your betrayal a secret," Kate snarls, her eyes blazing with anger, "And the funny thing is that you are right; if you hadn't been so sure you would get away with it, you could have gotten away with killing her. We'd never have been able to connect you directly to Sophie's murder if you'd thought to get rid of the one piece of evidence that put you at the scene of the crime."

"You probably didn't even know you were making them when you choked her to death," Esposito adds, rising to his feet with a careless shrug, "But we really are sorry we kept you waiting for so long. We layman cops like to be thorough before we charge someone."

* * *

They exit interrogation behind Teddy, who is sandwiched between two uniforms and on his way to booking. The path he's forced to walk takes him right past Will, and while Teddy attempts to say something, Will gives no acknowledgement that he heard.

But he's ready for Kate, reaching out to grasp her hand once she's within arm reach and draw her in for a hug. The thank you that he murmurs against her ear is choked with emotion, and while she normally might insist that he let her go and allow her to maintain a professional appearance among people who used to be colleagues, Kate just slides her arms around Will and holds on until he seems to have gotten his bearings.

"I need to thank the rest of you as well," Will says once he's released Kate, extending a hand to Esposito and Ryan in turn. Both men are quick to shake, Ryan even lifting his other hand to clap Will on the shoulder.

"Glad we could solve it," Espo says, shoving both hands into the back of his pocket when Will turns toward the last member of the investigative team.

The tension between Rick and Will is undeniable, and there is a moment of fear where Kate almost expects the two of them to come to blows, but Will seems to gather himself, and though he looks like he would rather do anything else, he still extends his hand and she's pleased when Rick meets him halfway for a brief shake.

"I appreciate all that you've done," he tells each of them, taking one step back with his eyes lingering on Kate, "And I'll give you all some space."

She watches as he wanders towards the break room, slipping through the door before Kate turns to give Esposito and Ryan each a hug. "I forgot how much I enjoy working with the two of you," she tells them both with a laugh, "But I hope we don't run into each other again because someone I know is dead."

"No kidding," Esposito replies, squeezing her shoulder briefly, "But you take care of yourself, Beckett."

"Don't let the Feds hassle you," Ryan adds, darting in for a second hug and then nudging Espo towards their desks to leave Castle alone with her.

She's suddenly aware that it's the first time they've been left to their own devices since their trip to Columbus Park, though it doesn't appear that Rick's train of thought has changed all that much. His eyes go immediately from her face to her left hand, Will's engagement ring still sparkling on her fourth finger, and as good as he can be at disguising his emotion, Castle can't quite pull off nonchalance at seeing it.

"You're staying with him," he says, sliding his hands into the pocket of his dress slacks.

"I'm going to explain to him what happened last night," Kate corrects gently, "And from there….." she shrugs, "But no matter what, I want you to know that you're very important to me and I…." she pauses, huffing out a breath of air that she hopes covers the way that her voice catches and the emotion wells up, "I care about you a lot, Rick Castle."

"Just be happy, Kate," he mutters, giving her a small smile, "That's all I've ever wanted for you."

* * *

"Are you sure about this?"

The question comes at the same time she closes her suitcase, the sound of zipper sliding around the edge of the container somehow sucking a bit of weight from the moment. Will knows as well as Kate that this is her last load of stuff, that once she departs with it that there's no reason for her to return.

Even though her mind is made up, she still appreciates that he doesn't want her to go.

"I'm sure," she tells Will, lifting the suitcase so that it's balanced on the rolling end. Her coat and her carry-on are already sitting near the door, waiting for Kate to pick them up. Normally, if she were packing to leave, she would have to wait on a taxi or someone from her FBI team to pick her up but today isn't normal.

Today is the culmination of a lot of life decisions that simultaneously scare her to death and have her shaking with anticipation. She'll simply hail a cab from the street when it's time to leave.

"Is there anything I can say? Anything I can do?" Will's risen from his spot on the bed, looking ridiculously young with his ancient jeans and faded Yale t-shirt. He looks wounded, and for just a moment Kate can remember the last time she left the home of someone she loved, and how Rick had given her that same long, searching glance.

It's hard to do it again, even if she knows in her bones, just as she did then, that it's the right thing to do, "No," Kate replies, "And I'm sorry for that."

To his credit, Will merely shrugs at the information, glancing out the bedroom window where a steady snow flurry has begun to fall. "Don't apologize," he says, "Deep down, I've always known it. From the time that he walked into the bridal suite, I've known that you and Rick had something that we never did."

"I wish I could tell you that isn't true…."

"I know," he tells her quickly, briefly closing his eyes in what she suspects is an attempt to stave off emotion. "But it is."

Her nod is brief, "I never got over him. I still care about him. Maybe I always have, or maybe I stopped and it came back to me when I saw him. I don't think I'll ever know."

"We could have been happy, you and I," Will says, giving her a smile that's genuine though weighed down with a sadness that they both share.

"We could have been great together," she agrees, wrapping her hand around the handle of her suitcase. "But I don't want to live a lie, and neither do you."

In the week since she and Will had returned from Boston, they had done nothing but talk. She had told him the truth about Castle, about their kiss in the park, and her conflicted emotions on marrying him. And Will had shared his own doubts, his worries that she would always want Castle instead of him, that he might never be able to trust her again.

But, through it all, he still loved her. Even when Kate had given back his engagement ring, even when they had decided that it was best not to get married, Will had been willing to work on their relationship.

She had been the one to decline, to explain where she felt her heart and her mind truly lay. Not just with her personal life, but her professional one.

"On that, we agree," Will says, closing the distance between the two of them to brush his lips across her cheek. "I hope you know that I'm still gonna think about you from time to time."

The laugh bubbles up out of her before Kate can get a handle on it, her smile full and genuine when she reaches up to brush her fingers over his cheek, "Oh, you'd better. I can't be the only one with fond memories."

She nearly tells him that he doesn't have to follow her out when she picks up her coat and shrugs it on, sliding the strap of the carry-on onto her shoulder and double checking that she has her phone and her plane ticket, but at the last moment, she bites her tongue, allowing Will to roll her suitcase down to the lobby and stand in the bitter cold in only his t-shirt while she hails a cab.

He loads her suitcase into the trunk and places her carry on in the backseat before turning to her, and Kate knows what he's going to do in the instant before it happens. When he kisses her it's soft and bittersweet, the type of contact that happens when you know it'll be your last, and she kisses him back, her fingers winding into his hair.

"I'll see you around, Kate," Will murmurs when they part, holding the door open to the cab and closing it behind her once she's safely inside.

"Bye, Will," she whispers, watching until he's slipped back into the apartment building that he had shared with her for the last eight months.

"Lady," the cabbie cuts into her reminiscing, his Boston accent thick and sharp to her ears. "Where ya headed?"

"Logan International," Kate replies, sinking into the backseat as the car pulls away from the curb. "Time to go home," she whispers to herself with a small smile.

* * *

 _A/N: While I initially planned this story to be six chapters; there will be a seventh chapter that is followed by an epilogue. Surprise!_


	7. Chapter 7

The knock on the door comes at possibly the worst moment, interrupting her reading of the final page of the penultimate chapter of the thick book in her hands. True, the majority of the story is over and there are only a few loose ends to tie up for the hero and his friends, but she would have much preferred that whoever is waiting on the other side had put off their visit for another half an hour or so.

"Coming," she calls out, affording just the smallest tilt of her head towards the door to ensure her voice carries, and then she's reading rapid fire, determined to finish the chapter before greeting what is surely another package that is being delivered after another late night Amazon binge from her father.

Marking her place, Alexis hurries to her feet when the second knock sounds, her red hair flapping around her shoulders with her growl of frustration. Whoever is waiting either didn't hear her or just doesn't care, not that it really matters. All she wants to do is sign for the package and get back to finishing her book.

With that thought in mind, she pulls open the loft's front door, a polite smile on her lips that dies the instant she gets a look at the person waiting on the other side.

"What are you doing here?" Alexis hurls the words out before she's given it that much thought, aware of the nasty bite that they carry. She's also got the urge to merely slam the door in Kate Beckett's face, to twist the lock and just ignore any subsequent knock that might come.

"I….." Kate begins, the surprise on her face giving way to confusion. Her eyebrows draw together in one smooth motion, leaving a small indent in the skin at the top of her nose, "Shouldn't you be in school? It's Wednesday afternoon."

"Teacher development day," Alexis replies, keeping her tone frosty and as unwelcome as she can manage. Of course, she could explain how she had planned to graduate in December and go off to Stanford with her now ex-boyfriend Ashley, but it's far more information than she thinks Kate deserves to know, nevermind that it still hurts to think of both Stanford's rejection letter and the necessary but still painful breakup that she's been navigating through for the past four months. "What are you doing here?" she asks again, shaking off memories of Ashley and California.

"I was looking for your dad," Kate tells Alexis with a small sigh, "He's not here, is he?"

"No," the answer is prompt, given with a keen hope of being able to dismiss Kate. Indeed Alexis is already stepping forward to close the door, to shove her father's former girlfriend onto someone else, "He's probably with Esposito and Ryan, why don't you call one of them?"

"Alexis!" Kate's voice is sharp, her hand darting out to stop the front door from shutting, "I know I'm not your favorite person in the world, but I really need to talk to your dad. And I don't want to do it while Ryan and Esposito are eavesdropping."

She doesn't bother to resist the urge to roll her eyes, the gesture followed by a long suffering sigh that would make her grandmother proud. But Alexis opens the door wider, aware that even though she wishes her dad would wash his hands of Kate Beckett and all the trouble that she brings with her, he would be furious to find out that she'd refused to let Kate in to wait for him.

"I suppose I should have just called him and let him know I was coming," Kate says once she's stepped into the loft and Alexis has shut the door behind her. It's been over seven years since she's been in the space, but it's largely unchanged. A new couch, some new photos to replace a few that she knows had contained her own face, but the feel of the place, the way things are arranged and organized; it's exactly the same. "I really thought he'd be home in the middle of the day. Procrastinating when he should be writing….."

For all the answer that she gets from the young redhead, she could have just stayed silent. Alexis has moved back to the couch, setting herself back against the cushions and she's disappeared behind the cover of a fairly thick book before Kate has managed to shed her black coat.

She picks a chair across from Alexis which affords her a view of the furrowed copper eyebrows and just enough of her blue eyes to know that while the young woman might be holding the book, she certainly isn't reading.

But the silence between them stretches on, tension bubbling and building with every passing minute until the book is lowered with a sharp intake of breath. Alexis had lasted ten minutes, but now she saddles Kate with the angry spark of her eyes and the sharp jut of her chin, "Aren't you supposed to be on a honeymoon with your husband?"

It isn't what she expected Alexis to ask, and it shows in the lift of her eyebrows but Kate composes herself easily, clearing her throat even as she considers the best way to explain. "No," she says quickly, unfolding her hands to give the girl a glimpse at her left hand, which is devoid of an engagement ring, "There is no husband. Will and I decided it was best to go our separate ways."

"So, what, you've decided to come back and date my dad?"

There is a fury on Alexis' face, and it should be enough to give her pause but Kate gives her an easy smile, wholly undaunted by the challenge in front of her, "If that is what he wants to do, yes," she answers. At that, Alexis only seems to grow angrier, her eyes narrowing dramatically when she crosses her arms over her chest, the book wedged between them as if it will further shield her from an emotional onslaught.

"That seems ridiculous given how well it worked out the last time," she snaps, "But I suppose when you get bored of him you'll just pack up your things and leave again, and I'll be the one that has to put him back together."

Kate doesn't doubt that at Alexis had taken on the responsibility of fixing her dad's broken heart when the two of them had separated, but even if she had suspected that was the case it still cracks something within her. Even when Kate had first met her, Alexis had been too wise for her own good. The eyes that were so like her father's were a bit too understanding whenever her mother cancelled yet another trip to New York to see her or, on the two times Meredith had visited, whisked herself back to LA within a few days.

Like Meredith before her, Kate had become just another woman who would leave if things got difficult, and she couldn't blame Alexis for drawing that conclusion.

"I'm sorry that you had to go through that," she finally says, aware that an apology so many years later has no hope of repairing the damage though Kate still feels an obligation to try.

She gets a shrug in response, the slow lift of a hand to tuck some of that brilliantly red hair behind an ear, "It was a long time ago. I've moved past it, I thought dad had too until he picked up that case with Ryan and Esposito."

"Why?" Kate asks, her curiosity getting the better of her, "Because he married Gina?"

The question earns her a snort and the shake of Alexis' head, "Gina was always a mistake. From beginning to end, he rushed into it and tried to convince himself of something that we all knew was a lie. And Gina eventually realized that she had been a replacement for the person he really wanted, and that was the end of that. I never blamed her for leaving."

It's clear in the hard look that she gives Kate that the person she blames is her.

"Alexis," she starts, not entirely sure where to begin in explaining herself and easing some of the pain that leaks through the hastily constructed armor that Alexis wears, "Leaving was what I thought would be best at the time."

"Leaving is never the best solution," Alexis fires at her, "Especially not for the people who are left behind."

It's natural that the simple truth in the young woman's words has Kate thinking of her mother, and that grief rises up, threatening to choke her with it before she even realizes it. It takes considerable effort to swallow it back, to battle against her knife sharp memories of loss and the knowledge of what her choices to try and cope with that loss have done to shape her life since.

"Sometimes when you lose someone, it shapes part of you," Kate tells her, clearing her throat to remove the traces of what she knows is her continued battle with tears. "I never meant to be the person who did that to you."

"It's not just me that you hurt."

She lets out a long breath, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, once again accepting the brutal honesty that the teenager is giving her without hesitation or excuses. "What did Rick tell you about why I left?"

For a moment, she's sure that Alexis isn't going to answer out of sheer loyalty to her father, but she seems to relent once she's placed her book onto the couch beside her. "He just said that you both thought it was time to end things, not that I ever believed him. He was too sad about you being gone to have wanted you to leave."

Of course he had tried to keep the worst of it from Alexis. At the time she'd been nine, far too young to be told the graphic details about her mother's murder and the hold that it had on Kate. In typical Rick Castle fashion, he'd shielded his daughter from the worst of it, given her a half truth that would allow Alexis to blame them in equal parts.

"He didn't want me to leave," Kate says in agreement, "But there were things in my life that had such a hold on me, and I had really left long before I actually packed my things. My mind, my attention….every part of me that mattered was stuck in my work and when I wasn't on duty, I was looking at a closed case."

"Your mother's murder," Alexis says, though it's not phrased as a question, "You told me it was why you became a cop."

She gives a nod, "It was an obsession. I told myself that if I studied it enough, if I doubled checked leads, tracked down the people who had given interviews in the area when she died, if I turned over enough stones, I'd find something that the detectives who worked the case missed and I'd be able to solve it and find some peace. But your dad…..he noticed that I'd go to my apartment when I got off shift, or that I'd be slipping away to make or answer a phone call when we were together. At first it was just maybe a night here or there, but before I knew it, every moment I wasn't working the job, I was working her case. I ignored his phone calls, I cancelled dates, there were a few times I just didn't show up for something because I had forgotten or lost track of time while absorbed in working her murder."

"It was months of that Alexis," Kate continues, hurrying to force out her explanation, "Months of putting the two of you off, of letting my mom's case be what mattered in my life. When Rick and I were together, he kept offering to help, I kept shoving him away and insisting he stay out of it because he wasn't trained. We started fighting. Weeks of arguing until he finally told me that I had to give myself room for a life around my grief and my obsession, that even if I solved the case I might not have anyone left in my life who cared."

"He made you choose?" she asks, her eyes going wide with surprise that only diminishes when Kate shakes her head.

"No," Kate corrects, "He never asked me to choose. He asked me to make room for the two of you next to my mom's case." And here, she has to pause, again waging an internal battle with her regret and her guilt. "I couldn't do it," she explains, her voice thick with the threat of tears once again, "I loved your father, and I loved you, but the idea of being a wife and a mother was overwhelming. I wasn't ready for it, but I thought maybe in time that would change. Maybe if I got my head on straight, if I went to therapy and worked through some of the things that I had kept inside after my mom was killed and learned to cope with all of it that I could be all of these things: a cop, a wife, and a mom. But it wasn't fair to your dad or to you that I stay around and give you hope for something that might never happen, and I chose to leave. To work on myself and get my priorities in order."

"And you never came back," Alexis replies, the challenge clear in her voice.

"Your dad got married," she says with a sigh, "I started therapy a couple months after we broke up, had made a lot of progress in working through some of my issues, and I missed you both. I would walk down the street and see a kid with your red hair and have to stop myself from hurrying your way, and I cried once when I passed a bookstore and they had one of those cardboard cutouts of Rick in the window. I told myself to wait, to make sure that I could come back and that I would be the person that you both needed, and by the time I got to that point it was too late. It'd been two years, your dad and Gina had gotten married, and I missed my shot."

"I'm sorry I left without saying goodbye, or at least trying to explain," Kate says, pleased to see the small nod of Alexis' head that seems to be in acceptance of her apology, "Even at nine, you deserved an explanation, and telling myself you were too young to understand or leaving Rick to explain it all wasn't the right thing to do."

"Dad never really explained," Alexis responds, and it's softer than it's been since Kate entered the loft. No longer does the teenager look ready to spit fire and toss her out of the loft, she's now looking at her with a measure of understanding, if not outright acceptance.

Kate will mark it down as progress.

"He never wanted me to hate you, I think," she continues, "He was always so insistent that things just hadn't worked between you and that it was for the best. But I always knew that he was lying, and even if he'd never admit it, that he missed you. And knowing that, watching him try to replace you and then be upset when it didn't work out…...it made it easy to hate you."

"I don't blame you for that," Kate replies with complete honesty, giving Alexis a tiny smile of encouragement. "If I were in your place, I'd feel the same way, but Alexis, I promise you, I'm not here to break your dad's heart again. I want this to work between us."

The nod that the redhead gives has the effect of lifting a weight off Kate's chest, and she takes a deep breath to soak in the feeling, "I can't promise you that we won't break up. I can't predict the future," she quickly adds, "But if your dad wants to try this again, I'm all in. Whatever that may mean."

That honesty is rewarded with a smile, and though it's painfully shy and hesitant, it feels as if she and Alexis have reached some resemblance of an understanding.

"Dad and I have a dinner date tonight," Alexis blurts out, curling her fingers around the edge of her book, "But I think maybe I'm going to see if my friend Taylor wants to have dinner, possibly catch a movie, get out of the loft for a bit….."

Though she doesn't say it outright, Kate feels like the awkward rambling is a blessing of sorts from the teenager and, despite herself, the laugh bubbles out and it's one that Alexis returns with her own giggle as she gets to her feet, taking her book as she goes. "I'm gonna go upstairs and get some things together, make yourself comfortable."

* * *

"I'm late, I know! I'm sorry!"

Rick's shouting from the moment that he opens the front door of the loft, hastily slipping off his coat and tossing it towards the couch. He doesn't make it, the heavy wool fabric instead falling to the hardwood floor but he makes no move to pick it up. He and Alexis are due for their dinner reservation in twenty minutes, and he definitely needs to change into a new shirt before they go.

Being late wasn't planned. All day he had been insistent that at 5:30 he would be out the door, giving himself plenty of time to get home, change, and head uptown for dinner and, possibly, a movie with his teenager.

But that was before an Assistant District Attorney was tossed off a parking garage and Esposito discovered that the guy might have ties to an escort website. The next thing he had known it was 6:40 and he was very, very late for his rendezvous with Alexis.

Rick is halfway down the hall towards his bedroom before he notices how quiet the loft is. So consumed with his rushing and his panic that his kid would be angry with him, he turns back towards the living room and realizes with a start that it's more than just quiet; the lights are off bar the lamp by the grand piano and the blue glow of the wine fridge in the kitchen.

"Alexis?" he asks, his voice less high energy and more concerned. "Mother?"

No one answers, but he does hear a distinct shuffle coming from the direction of his office, and Rick has to grin even if they don't have time for games. "Alexis, we don't have time for laser tag. We're gonna miss dinner!" he says, charging back towards his office where he expects his vest and gun to be ready and waiting on his desk.

Like the rest of the loft, his office is mostly dark, ambient light seeping in from the windows illuminating everything with the blue-white glow of the city at nighttime. He makes it two steps in before he registers the frame of a body sitting in his desk chair, but rather than his daughter with her vivid red hair, it's a woman with long brown locks and a soft smile that makes his stomach flip-flop.

"Kate," he breaths out her name in surprise, his eyes wide and so very blue while they rake over her form. She's obviously comfortable, her jean clad legs curled underneath her body, and a dog-eared copy of his first novel, _In A Hail of Bullets_ , clutched in her hand. The white top she's wearing seems to glow in the half-light as she marks her page by folding down the corner, and she's on her feet before he's managed to draw a breath.

"What are you doing here?" he finally croaks it out once she's stepped past his desk, making a direct line for him.

"Waiting for you," Kate replies, stopping within arms reach of him, so close that he can see the delighted sparkle in her eyes, the way her lips are playing with a gentle grin that he absurdly wants to taste with his mouth.

"For me?" he asks because even with his surprise and pleasure at seeing her again, Rick can't quite fit the pieces together. He hasn't seen her in ten days, ten days since she left the precinct with Will Sorenson and boarded a flight back to Boston and a life that distinctly didn't include him. "Why would you be waiting for me?"

For the first time since he walked in the office and laid eyes on her, there's a hint of nerves in her gaze; a subtle wetting of her lips that is done unconsciously but still manages to be entirely distracting. "Well, I wanted to ask you a question."

"Sure," Rick replies automatically, "Anything you want to know."

The nerves are replaced with relief, that easy happiness pouring back into her eyes so that they reflect a soft forest green, "Will you go on a date with me?"

For a moment, he isn't sure how to react. Those are words that he's wanted to hear from Kate for far longer than just the past week, and now that she's said them he can't contain the happiness that bubbles up, nor can he do much to change the fact that is accompanied by a certain resignation. "A date?" he sighs, "You're supposed to be in Boston with Will, not going on a date with me."

He's very proud that he manages the last sentence without sounding bitter or disappointed.

"We broke up," she says simply, and his heart soars at the news, burning away whatever bitterness that had lingered when he realized Kate had left the city and, so he thought, made a choice other than him. There is only one other three word phrase he can think of in his entire life that has stirred such an equally potent response within him, and Rick doesn't think it's a coincidence that they were issued to him from the same woman standing in front of him right now. "He and I both agreed that getting married when you are in love with someone else isn't a good idea."

"You -" he has to pause, his heart too busy skipping a beat to allow him to continue speaking. For just a moment, Rick closes his eyes, gathers himself as best he can and then levels his gaze on Kate, hands already reaching out to grasp her upper arms and drag her a few steps closer, "You're in love with someone else?"

"Yeah," Kate agrees, the grin that forms at her mouth once of sheer joy, "You. You're the guy I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the one that I want to curl up with at night. You make me laugh, you get under my skin, you challenge me like no one else ever has…."

"Kate…."

"I don't know if this will work," she cuts over him, her voice soft but insistent in a way that draws out his own huge grin, "But I love you, Richard Castle, and I want you do go on a date with me so we can see where this can go when I'm not scared to death of what it means and drowning in my past."

"I think I can manage that," he replies, using his hand to draw a path from her bicep up across her shoulder and her neck to cup her cheek in his palm.

"Good," she grins, rising up on her tiptoes to brush her mouth against his, "Because I really wasn't taking no for an answer."

* * *

 _A/N: Epilogue still to come. :)_


	8. Epilogue

**THREE YEARS and FOUR MONTHS LATER.** _May 2014._

* * *

The crowd is perhaps one of the more eclectic that he's ever been part of in his life. Weaving between small groups of people as he is, he's spotted cops and creatives, lawyers and writers, and the back of the head of who he will swear was a rather famous movie star, one that he happens to know is being courted to play the role of Jameson Rook.

Will wishes he didn't know that, but some things have filtered into his brain over the years, and Richard Castle's international success for his spin off novel that had introduced the world to one Nikki Heat had stuck like not much else could. After learning about the novel, he had regularly googled for more information, and his efforts had taught him that the buddy cop novels which had brought the man such success after Derrick Storm were being expanded and introducing a tough female detective that would oversee the pair based on Ryan and Esposito that were commonly referred to with one moniker in the books 'Roach'.

Four books later, Nikki Heat had risen through the ranks to earn her Lieutenant badge, the promotion coming in the last pages and, hot on its release date heels, the news that Rick Castle had sold the rights to a series of movies and multiple A-listers were courting him and the studio for the chance at various roles.

Shaking his head in embarrassment at himself, Will snags a flute of champagne when a waiter walks past, taking a moment to lean against the pristine white fence that runs the length of the extensive backyard of Castle's Hamptons estate. To his left, the property rolls gently towards a large pool and guest house that matches the main building and to his right there is a sharp cliff with unobstructed views of the water. He already knows from previous observation that there are a set of stairs to lead you to the ocean and the sand, though he's seen no one head that direction just yet. Instead, all the guests are clustered around for cocktail hour, nibbling on tiny bites served from the silver platters of other waiters and sipping, like him, from champagne or any number of drinks one can order from the large bar stationed beside what is sure to become a dance floor later on in the night.

His first sip of alcohol is slow, blue eyes swiveling across the crowd both in observance and surveillance. The object of his search is of no surprise, nor is she hard to spot despite the nearly two hundred individuals that have arrived to celebrate.

Kate's glowing as she stands with her father and Lanie, a brilliant smile on her face as a breeze picks up and ruffles the loose curls framing her face. Her hair is lighter now, sun kissed with caramel and gold, and he's decided after half an hour of watching her stand in front of this crowd that it quite suits her. Unlike the last time he saw her in a wedding dress, she's put all of it up in an elegant and elaborate design.

The dress is also different. The sleek satin column she'd picked for their canceled nuptials has been traded for something that seems to float when she walks, delicate lace and the subtle glitter of something woven into the fabric catching the light when Kate moves in a certain way. The thin straps at her shoulders are also delicate, but like everything else with her today, it only accentuates her beauty and her strength.

It's different. They're different, and even if he's long made his peace with it all, he isn't going to deny how weird it is.

Will pushes away from the fence with determination, weaving once again through the cluster of guests until he's reached the trio. Predictably, it's Lanie who sees him first, on her way to talk to a group of other guests, and it does a world of good for his nerves to watch the surprise, the confusion, and the question of why he's at Kate Beckett's wedding slide across her face before she can reign it in and smile at him in welcome.

Jim Beckett doesn't seem ruffled when their eyes meet, which leaves him guessing that Kate at least told her father that she had invited him, but he knows from the moment that his former fiancé spins to face him that she never expected him to actually show up.

"Will!" Kate's grinning even before she's said his name, her eyes twinkling with delight as she raises her arms to draw him in for a hug, "You came!"

The laugh slides out of him with ease, serving to burn away any lingering awkwardness that might have been swirling between the two of them when he steps forward to return her hug. "And miss this soiree? Never," he teases, stepping forward to shake Jim's hand when the man offers it to him..

"Katie, I'm gonna leave you two to catch up," Jim tells his daughter, dusting a kiss at her cheek, "Good to see you again, Will."

It's a relief to know that Kate's dad actually meant the words given how badly things had ended with his daughter, and he takes a moment to watch him step back across the lawn, stopping beside a woman with flaming red hair that he distantly recognizes as Castle's mother.

"Aren't you supposed to be in Prague?" Kate asks once her father has taken his leave and Will's returned his attention to her.

"I got back two weeks ago," he grins, "But that was where I went. The opportunity came open not long after you moved back to New York, and I took a chance. Spent three years out there, did some good, met some interesting people…."

"Would one of those be the blonde that sat next to you during the ceremony?" she asks, lips twisting in one of those all knowing little smirks that used to both annoy him and drive Will to distraction.

"Her name's Elise," he laughs, filling in the blanks for Kate before she can pepper him with questions. "She was over there teaching English as a second language, and it just…...it worked, from the word go. We're getting married in October, in Rhode Island of all places."

"Your mother is gonna love that," Kate chuckles, tucking one of those stray curls framing her face behind an ear, "Shunning a big New York society wedding."

"Oh she's miserable, but there is an incredibly ostentatious bridal shower being held at the Plaza to appease her," Will replies with a slow raise of his eyebrows, "How is life as a NYPD Lieutenant?"

"The usual," she hums, "Terrible pay, long hours, constant paperwork."

"Like you would want to do anything else," he says, the argument in his voice light even though they both know the truth of the words.

"Definitely not," Kate agrees with a quick grin, "The FBI never really felt right once I left Quantico. I just told myself that the importance of the job was bigger than my happiness about what I was doing day after day. But going back, working with my team….it's what I'm meant to do, where I'm supposed to be."

For a moment, he bites his tongue, weighing the merits of saying what's on his mind with her words. "I think that was the case for both of us," he admits, "And, really, it's worked out for the best hasn't it?"

Kate's answering smile is really all the confirmation that he needs, though the soft murmur of agreement she gives is just as welcome, a murmur that quickly turns into a quiet laugh when Rick Castle saddles up to the pair of them and lays a smacking, noisy kiss against her left cheek.

"Castle!" she shrieks, lightly swatting at her new husband's arm, gentle in how she pushes him away though anyone watching them could easily tell it's all for show. Katherine Beckett is hopelessly in love, and that glow Will had noted while watching her earlier only seems to be more pronounced when the two of them are standing together, the fingers of her left hand and Rick's right already intertwined.

His years of being trained to observe everything means that he notices details that others might not, and the image of the writer lightly twisting the pair of rings that Kate now wears on her left hand, and the way Kate's eyes widen just a fraction and her mouth twitches with pleasure is something that he doesn't think he'll soon be forgetting.

"Will," Castle greets him formally once he's taken notice of who his wife has been chatting with, the slightest chill coming in with the May breeze that rolls in from the ocean as the late spring day turns slowly to twilight.

"Rick," he says without hesitation, offering his hand for a quick shake. It's as much a gesture of forgiveness as it is greeting, but whatever frostiness might have been lingering between them dissipates when he closes his hand over the writer's. By the time they separate, Rick is smiling, the corners of his eyes twinkling with that same bubbling happiness that Kate has, "Good to see you," Will adds, pleased to find that he means it, "You do know you'll have your hands full with this one, don't you?"

The laugh he gives is one from a man that knows all too well the truth of such words. Kate Beckett is certainly a lot of things, but easy to handle and, sometimes, being easy to love aren't possibly her most attractive qualities. "No doubt," Castle grins at him, a second laugh flowing out of him when he catches Kate's stern look, "But I think I'm up to the challenge."

"Said like he isn't a pain in the ass himself," she sighs, but the angry retort she's trying to give doesn't quite land its mark, not when she's having to bite back the smile that's been plastered on her face the entire day.

"Take care of her, Rick," Will says, meeting Kate's eyes for just a moment, "You've got one hell of a woman there."

"Believe me," Castle tells him, stepping forward to draw Kate against him and press a light kiss against her hair, "I know."

With a final smile and a lift of his nearly empty champagne glass, Will turns to head back across the lawn, making a straight line for the petite blonde woman that's standing alone and waiting for him. It's like the final weight being lifted off his chest, ensuring himself that Kate is happy and where she's meant to be. In some weird, circle of life moment, he feels like he's walking away from his past and into his future, grasping Elise's hand with his and bending to kiss her in a way that isn't unlike Castle's brush to Kate's hair.

But it's good, he thinks. Even if it hurt to live through, they both ended where they belonged.

"You owe me twenty bucks," the murmur curls against the outer shell of Kate's ear, enveloping her in whatever spell her husband is trying to cast, though she'd bet a certain measure of money it's simply distraction versus the purr of seduction that her hormones want it to be.

Still, she scoffs, her eyes moving in a well practiced and regularly utilized roll, though she adds the dig of her elbow into Castle's ribs and grins at the soft exhale he gives in response, "I am _not_ giving you twenty bucks because your male pride wanted to bet on Will coming to our wedding."

"Man, you are cranky when you lose…." Rick chuckles, dipping his head to touch his mouth to the tender spot just below Kate's ear that he knows will make her twitch. And when she does, he grins, incredibly proud of himself at knowing her so well and, really, at just being able to call her his.

Not that he needed a marriage and a ring to do that, but it's nice to have it all official nonetheless.

"Who's the new girl?" he asks once Kate has leaned into him, bestowing her own gentle peck against a jawline that's beginning to sport the beginning of a five o'clock shadow. From their spot at the edge of the reception, his arms wrapped around her waist and Kate's hands resting on top of his, they have the perfect vantage point to see Will and a girl that Rick doesn't know, but Will obviously is dating.

"Elise," Kate hums, tilting her head to grin at him, "They're getting married in October."

And, just like that, her grin is sharper, suddenly victorious. As usual, she's managed to one up him.

"Damn," Rick groans, hating himself for allowing Kate to goad him into a second bet that not only would Will come to the wedding, but he would be seriously dating someone else. "Now I owe you twenty bucks."

"I don't recall betting you with money, Rick," she practically sing songs, those long fingers of hers dancing across the dark fabric of his suit, "But I expect you'll live up to your end of the bargain."

"You have no idea," he nearly growls the words in her ear, his vivid imagination easily able to picture the payment that Kate had outlined for him if she were to win flashing in his mind. Hell, he would have given in even if she had lost.

"They look happy together," Kate says, drawing his attention back from the urge to sneak away and lock themselves in the master suite for the rest of the reception. She's still watching Will and Elise as they stand together, now in animated conversation with Ryan, Esposito and Alexis, "I'm glad for him. He deserves someone special."

"Looks to me like he got it," Rick replies, smiling as Elise gives a laugh and turns her head to smile at Will. He knows that look. It's the same one that Kate gives him, the look that frequently pushes the air from his lungs and causes his heart to skip a beat. "She loves him very much."

"It all worked out in the end," Kate says, nudging her forehead against his cheek with such a gentleness that his heart swells up with emotion. Before he's really thought about it, Rick has turned his head to capture her mouth, holding her steady with a broad palm lifting to hover against her cheek.

He pours it all into the kiss: how much he loves her, how lucky he is to have her and be loved by her, how thankful he is that she took a risk and uprooted her life to give them a shot to be here today. The best part of it all is that Kate, as usual, matches him tit for tat, pouring all of that and more back into the contact until they're both breathless and a bit dizzy.

"You know me," he says once they've broken apart, the words a little strained from a lack of oxygen, "I'm a believer in fate and destiny, and I know you think it's all ridiculous, but you and I? We ran into one another again for a reason, Kate. And I fully believe that reason was so we could be together and get our happy ending."

"You're right," she agrees, leaning forward for a quick peck at his mouth, "I don't believe in any of that stuff, but I believe in you, and I believe in how much I love you and how good we are together. And isn't that all that matters?"

"It's all that matters to me at any rate."

Kate's answer is a grin while she steps out of his arms, though she maintains a hold on his left hand, "Come on, Mr. Castle, I believe you owe your wife a dance."

His laugh is low and soft, but the way her eyes sparkle at him is enough to know that she heard. "My pleasure, Mrs. Castle," he murmurs, content to follow, just as he usually is, in Kate's lead.

* * *

 _A/N: And there you have it, the conclusion of one of my favorite fanfics that I've ever written. Thanks to everyone that has followed this story, read this story, and reviewed this story. I thought when I started working on this that a couple dozen people might read it, but it's truly grown to be one of the most popular things I've written which is both surprising and humbling. I also want to thank the prompter of this fic on the Castle Fanfics Prompts Blog on Tumblr for coming up with the idea, without which I wouldn't have written this. I hope it lived up to your expectations. :)_


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